The free IGN Maps application, developed by the National Institute of Geographical and Forestry Information (a public institution), allows you to:

• obtain an itinerary to be taken, as a pedestrian or driver of a motor vehicle, after having indicated a point of departure and arrival;
• Observe the evolution of French territory by comparing maps or aerial views of the same place at different periods (notably the years 1950-1965 and 2000-2005);
• obtain information on a building (height, number of dwellings, year of construction, etc.), the type of crop produced in a field, the tree species that make up a forest or the nature of a beach (sand or pebbles);
• to display sites showing the transformation of the French territory, and thus observe the impact of intensive agriculture on the country's agricultural landscapes, the effect of deindustrialization in certain regions, the tourism footprint on the Atlantic coast, or the joint expansion of the city and the forest in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées...
• to discover “points of interest” (places of culture or sports, transport, restaurants, accommodation, public services, shops...) located around the place where you are located or close to a place or an address that you specify.

You may also report an anomaly in the application information (a difference between what you see on the spot and the map representation made by the National Institute of Geographical and Forestry Information). These may include:

• modification of the road network;
• the renaming of a street;
• the construction or destruction of a building.

To get the IGN Cards app on your mobile phone or tablet, you need to download it to your app store.