Francia or Frankia, later also called the Frankish Empire (Latin: imperium Francorum), Frankish Kingdom (Latin: regnum Francorum, "Kingdom of the Franks"), Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne—father, son, grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century. The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms).

The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe; even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine. Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France, and which region gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France. The first recorded naming of Francia is in the Panegyrici Latini of the early third century.

At the time it described the area north and east of the Rhine, roughly in the triangle between Utrecht, Bielefeld, and Bonn. It corresponded with the joint lands of Frankish tribes of the Sicambri, Salians, Bructeri, Ampsivarii, Chamavi and Chattuarii. Some of these peoples like the Sicambri and Salians already had lands in the Roman Empire and delivered troops to Roman forces at the border.

In 357 the Salian king entered the Roman Empire and made a permanent footprint there by a treaty granted by Julian the Apostate, who forced back the Chamavi to Hamaland. As Frankish territory expanded, the meaning of "Francia" expanded with it. While many Franks operating on Roman soil, like Bauto and Arbogastes, were committed to the cause of the Romans, other Frankish kings, like Mallobaudes, were active on Roman soil for other reasons.

After the fall of Arbogastes, his son Arigius succeeded in establishing a hereditary countship at Trier and after the fall of the usurper Constantine III some Franks supported the usurper Jovinus (411). Although Jovinus was dead by 413, the Romans could no longer manage the Franks within their borders.

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