Pays de la Loire (French pronunciation: ​[pe.i də la lwaʁ]; Breton:Broioù al Liger) is one of the 18 regions of France. It is one of the regions created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital, Nantes, one of a handful so-called "balancing metropolises" (métropoles d'équilibre)¹. Other examples of "artificially created" regions include Rhône-Alpes, which was created as the region for Lyon, and Midi-Pyrénées, which was created as the region for Toulouse.