Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded Jacques Chirac as French president today, promising to usher in an era of change and restore national pride.
At the start of ceremonies mixing republican pageantry and symbolic gesture, Mr Sarkozy was inaugurated under the chandeliers of the Elysee Palace, which will be his home for the next five years following his comprehensive election victory on May 6.
France's new President Nicolas Sarkozy rides in a motorcade up the Avenue des Champs Elysees today. Image: Reuters.
In his first speech in the opulent Salle des Fetes, Mr Sarkozy, 52, vowed not to disappoint the French people.
"I will defend the independence of France. I will defend the identity of France," said the conservative leader, who is the first French head of state to be born after World War Two.
"There is a need to unite the French people ... and to meet commitments because never before has (public) confidence been so shaken and so fragile," he said in an apparent dig at Chirac, a former political mentor with whom he now has strained relations.
He also pledged to put the fight against global warming and the defence of human rights at the heart of his foreign policy.
His first act after his speech was to greet family members, including his wife, Cecilia, who has hardly been seen in public this year fuelling speculation about their marriage.
Following a private lunch, Mr Sarkozy rode in an opentop car up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, escorted by the mounted Republican Guard, and laid a floral tribute at the tomb of the unknown soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
He plunged into the crowd to shake hands with well-wishers before laying wreaths at statues of France's World War One and Two leaders -- Georges Clemenceau and General Charles de Gaulle.
Continuing the national theme, he paid homage to 35 French resistance fighters killed by the Nazis in 1944 before heading off to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel in a trip aimed at underscoring the importance of Franco-German relations.
Mr Sarkozy is widely expected to name moderate conservative Francois Fillon as his prime minister on tomorrow, and draft centrists and high-profile leftists into a streamlined cabinet which will probably be unveiled on Friday.