We provide a highly granular account of land-use change across France, comparing two snapshots taken approximately 160 years apart. Built or paved land increased from about 0.7% of the territory in 1860 to 5.2% in 2020. Over the same period, cropland contracted by 20 percentage points to 42%, and meadows nearly disappeared. Only a small fraction of these declines is explained by land development; instead, the shares of forests and pastures roughly doubled. Although recent policies aim to limit land development, our results suggest that the spatial dispersion of developed land may pose a greater concern than its total share.