is the setting of Pokémon X and Y. Noted to look like a star, the highly urban Lumiose City (Miare City (Miare Shiti) in Japan) featuring a large tower is at the region's center. In the original trailer, a golden palace and a barren wasteland with pod-like buildings are also seen.
In the original teaser trailer, GamesRadar editors noted a marked resemblance of a large tower in the background to the Eiffel Tower and the palace's resemblance to Versailles. This, accompanied by Pikachu's apparent debut in the video atop the Eiffel Tower, led them to believe this edition will be taking place in a region with Parisian or overall Frenchorigins. At a developers' roundtable at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013, The Pokémon Company's president Tsunekazu Ishihara and game director Junichi Masuda stated they had chosen France as the basis for the Kalos Region as France has a focus on its beauty in its architecture, food, and language, and they were going in the same direction for the design of X and Y. Along this line of thought, they named it "Kalos" after the Ancient Greek word καλός (kalós), meaning "beautiful". Masuda stated he visited Paris, Avignon, Arles, Marseilles, Nice, Èze, Mont Saint-Michel, the Palace of Versailles, and the Châteaux of the Loire Valley on a personal trip after completion of Black and White, but returned a year later for a proper research trip with Game Freak. Lumiose City, in particular, was based on Paris, the themes of which appear in the games overall, but Lyon and Reims also have influences in the level design. The Carnac stones of Brittany also inspire a region in Kalos, and Masuda made sure to learn as much as he could about them to incorporate them properly in the game.
