Paris

/par"is/; for 2 also Fr. /pann rddee"/, n.

1. Matthew. See Matthew of Paris.

2. Ancient, Lutetia Parisiorum, Parisii /peuh riz"ee uy'/. a city in and the capital of France and capital of Ville-de-Paris Department, in the N part, on the Seine. 2,317,227.

3. a city in NE Texas. 25,498.

4. a town in NW Tennessee. 10,728.

5. Treaty of,

a. a treaty signed in 1763 by France, Spain, and Great Britain that ended the Seven Years' War and the French and Indian War.

b. a treaty signed in 1783 by the United States and Great Britain that ended the American Revolution.

c. a treaty signed in 1898 by the United States and Spain that ended the Spanish-American War.

/par"is/, n. Class. Myth.

a Trojan prince, son of Priam and Hecuba and brother of Cassandra, who awarded the apple of discord to Aphrodite and was by her help enabled to abduct Helen. Also called Alexander, Alexandros.

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I

City (pop., 1999: 2,125,246; metro. area, 9,644,507), river port, capital of France.

It is now located on both banks of the Seine River. The original settlement from which Paris evolved, Lutetia, was in existence by the late 3rd century BC on an island in the Seine. Lutetia was captured and fortified by the Romans in 52 BC. During the 1st century AD the city spread to the left bank of the Seine. By the early 4th century it was known as Paris. It withstood several Viking sieges (885–87) and became the capital of France in 987, when Hugh Capet, the count of Paris, became king. The city was improved during the reign of Philip II, who formally recognized the University of Paris с 1200. In the 14th–15th centuries its development was hindered by the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. In the 17th–18th centuries it was improved and beautified. Leading events of the French Revolution took place in Paris (1789–99). Napoleon III commissioned Georges-Eugène Haussmann to modernize the city's infrastructure and add several new bridges over the Seine. The city was the site of the Paris Peace Conference, which ended World War I. During World War II Paris was occupied by German troops. It is now the financial, commercial, transportation, artistic, and intellectual centre of France. The city's many attractions include the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Louvre, the Panthéon, Pompidou Centre, and the Paris Opera, as well as boulevards, public parks, and gardens.

II

In Greek mythology, a son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba.

An evil portent prompted his parents to abandon him as an infant. Unknown to them, he was raised as a shepherd, and as a young man he was received home again after winning a boxing contest against Priam's other sons. Zeus chose him to determine which of three goddesses was most beautiful

Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. In the famous "judgment of Paris," he chose Aphrodite because she offered to help him win the most beautiful woman alive. His seduction of Helen was the cause of the Trojan War. Near the end of the war, Paris shot the arrow that killed Achilles and soon afterward was himself killed.

III

(as used in expressions)

John of Paris

Jean de Paris

Pact of Paris

Notre Dame de Paris

Paris Commune

Commune of Paris

Paris Opéra

Paris Peace Conference

Paris Congress of

Paris Treaty of

Paris University of

Paris Match

plaster of paris

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▪ France

Introduction

city and capital of France, located in the north-central part of the country. People were living on the site of the present-day city, located along the Seine River some 233 miles (375 km) upstream from the river's mouth on the English Channel (La Manche), by about 7600 BC. The modern city has spread from the island (the Île de la Cité) and far beyond both banks of the Seine.

      Paris occupies a central position in the rich agricultural region known as the Paris Basin, and it constitutes one of eight départements of the Île-de-France administrative region. It is by far the country's most important centre of commerce and culture. Area city, 41 square miles (105 square km); metropolitan area, 890 square miles (2,300 square km). Pop. (1999) city, 2,125,246; (2005 est.) city, 2,153,600; urban agglomeration, 9,854,000.

Character of the city

      For centuries Paris has been one of the world's most important and attractive cities. It is appreciated for the opportunities it offers for business and commerce, for study, for culture, and for entertainment; its gastronomy, haute couture, painting, literature, and intellectual community especially enjoy an enviable reputation. Its sobriquet “the City of Light” (“la Ville Lumière”), earned during the Enlightenment, remains appropriate, for Paris has retained its importance as a centre for education and intellectual pursuits.

      Paris's site at a crossroads of both water and land routes significant not only to France but also to Europe has had a continuing influence on its growth. Under Roman administration, in the 1st century BC, the original site on the Île de la Cité was designated the capital of the Parisii tribe and territory. The Frankish king Clovis I had taken Paris from the Gauls by AD 494 and later made his capital there. Under Hugh Capet (ruled 987–996) and the Capetian dynasty the preeminence of Paris was firmly established, and Paris became the political and cultural hub as modern France took shape. France has long been a highly centralized country, and Paris has come to be identified with a powerful central state, drawing to itself much of the talent and vitality of the provinces.

 The three main parts of historical Paris are defined by the Seine. At its centre is the Île de la Cité, which is the seat of religious and temporal authority (the word cité connotes the nucleus of the ancient city). The Seine's Left Bank (Rive Gauche) has traditionally been the seat of intellectual life, and its Right Bank (Rive Droite) contains the heart of the city's economic life, but the distinctions have become blurred in recent decades. The fusion of all these functions at the centre of France and, later, at the centre of an empire, resulted in a tremendously vital environment. In this environment, however, the emotional and intellectual climate that was created by contending powers often set the stage for great violence in both the social and political arenas—the years 1358, 1382, 1588, 1648, 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1870 being notable for such events. (For more information, see below History (Paris); see France: History (France).)

 In its centuries of growth Paris has for the most part retained the circular shape of the early city. Its boundaries have spread outward to engulf the surrounding towns (bourgs), usually built around monasteries or churches and often the site of a market. From the mid-14th to the mid-16th century, the city's growth was mainly eastward; since then it has been westward. It comprises 20 arrondissements (municipal districts), each of which has its own mayor, town hall, and particular features. The numbering begins in the heart of Paris and continues in the spiraling shape of a snail shell, ending to the far east. Parisians refer to the arrondissements by number as the first (premier), second (deuxième), third (troisième), and so on. Adaptation to the problems of urbanization—such as immigration, housing, social infrastructure, public utilities, suburban development, and zoning—has produced the vast urban agglomeration.

Ed.

Landscape

City site

 Paris is positioned at the centre of the Île-de-France region, which is crossed by the Seine, Oise (Oise River), and Marne (Marne River) rivers. The city is ringed with great forests of beech and oak; they are called the “lungs of Paris,” for they help to purify the air in the heavily industrialized region. The city proper is small; no corner is farther than about 6 miles (10 km) from the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral (Notre-Dame de Paris). It occupies a depression hollowed out by the Seine (Seine River), and the surrounding heights have been respected as the limits of the city. Elevation varies from 430 feet (130 metres) at the butte of Montmartre, in the north, to 85 feet (26 metres) in the Grenelle area, in the southwest.

      The Seine flows for about 8 miles (13 km) through the centre of the city and 10 of the 20 arrondissements. It enters the city at the southeast corner, flows northwestward, and turns gradually southwestward, eventually leaving Paris at the southwest corner. As a result, what starts out as the stream's east bank becomes its north bank and ends as the west bank, and the Parisians therefore adopted the simple, unchanging designation of Right Bank and Left Bank (when facing downstream). Specific places, however, are usually indicated by arrondissement or by quarter (quartier).

      At water level, some 30 feet (9 metres) below street level, the river is bordered—at least on those portions not transformed into expressways—by cobbled quays graced with trees and shrubs. From street level another line of trees leans toward the water. Between the two levels, the retaining walls, usually made of massive stone blocks, are decorated with the great iron rings once used to moor merchant vessels, and some are pierced by openings left by water gates for old palaces or inspection ports for subways, sewers, and underpasses. At intermittent points the walls are shawled in ivy.

      The garden effect of the Seine's open waters and its tree-lined banks foster in part the appearance of Paris as a city well-endowed with green spaces. Tens of thousands of trees (mostly plane trees, with a scattering of chestnuts) line the streets as well, and numerous public parks, gardens, and squares dot the city. Most of the parks and gardens of the modern central city are on land that formerly was reserved for the kings on the old city's outskirts. Under Napoleon III, who had been impressed by London's parks while living in Britain, two ancient royal military preserves at the approaches to Paris were made into “English” parks—the Bois de Boulogne to the west and the Bois de Vincennes to the east. Moreover, during his reign a large area of land was laid out in promenades and garden squares. Under Mayor Jacques Chirac (Chirac, Jacques) in the late 20th century, the municipal government initiated efforts to create new parks, and such projects continued into the 21st century.

Climate

      In its location on the western side of Europe and in a plain relatively close to the sea, Paris benefits from the balmy influences of the Gulf Stream and has a fairly temperate climate. The weather can be very changeable, however, especially in winter and spring, when the wind can be sharp and cold. The annual average temperature is in the lower 50s F (roughly 12 °C); the July average is in the upper 60s F (about 19 °C), and the January average is in the upper 30s F (about 3 °C). The temperature drops below freezing for about a month each year, and snow falls on approximately half of those days. The city has taken measures to decrease air pollution, and a system of water purification has made tap water safe for drinking.

City layout

      Over the centuries, as Paris expanded outward from the Île de la Cité, various walls were built to enclose parts of the city. After the Roman town on the Left Bank was sacked by barbarians in the 3rd century AD, the fire-blackened stones were freighted across to the Île de la Cité, where a defensive wall was constructed. Neglected in times of peace, it was rebuilt several times over the course of the centuries. The earliest of the bridges to the Left Bank, the Petit Pont (Little Bridge), which has been rebuilt several times, was guarded by a fortified gate, the Petit Châtelet (châtelet meaning a small castle or fortress). The bridge to the Right Bank, the Pont au Change (Exchange Bridge), was guarded by the Grand Châtelet, which served as a fort, prison, torture chamber, and morgue until it was demolished in 1801.

      From 1180 to 1225 King Philip II built a new wall that protected the settlements on both banks. In 1367–70 the Right Bank enclosure was enlarged by Charles V, with the massive Bastille fortress protecting the eastern approaches as the Louvre fortress protected the west. In 1670 Louis XIV had the Charles V walls replaced by the tree-planted Grands Boulevards, embellished at the Saint-Denis Gate (Porte Saint-Denis) and the Saint-Antoine Gate (Porte Saint-Antoine) with triumphal arches; the Saint-Denis arch still stands. (The word boulevard, related to “bulwark,” originally was a military engineering term for the platform of a defensive wall.) Imitating the arch of the river, the Grands Boulevards still stretch from the present-day Place de la Madeleine north and east to the present-day Place de la République.

      In the second half of the 18th century, a new wall was begun. The wall was built with 57 tollhouses to enable the farmers-general, a company of tax “farmers,” or collectors, to collect customs duties on goods entering Paris. The tollhouses are still standing at Place Denfert-Rochereau.

      The last wall, built in the mid-19th century by Adolphe Thiers (Thiers, Adolphe) for King Louis-Philippe, was a genuine military installation with outlying forts. By the time it was finished, it enclosed a number of hamlets outside Paris, among them Auteuil, Passy, Montmartre, La Villette, and Belleville.

      The rebuilding and economic recovery that occurred after the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire in 1870, along with the expansion of employment provoked by the Industrial Revolution, drew more and more people to Paris—with ever-increasing facility as railways developed. Between 1852 and 1870 the city planner Baron Haussmann (Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron) razed the walls of the farmers-general and built a number of wide, straight boulevards that cut through the city's mass of narrow streets. The 19th-century walls were eventually knocked down, and the boulevards were extended in 1925.

      Today Paris's many boulevards, old buildings, monuments, gardens, plazas, and bridges compose one of the world's grandest cityscapes. Much of central Paris was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991.

Île de la Cité

 Situated in the Seine in the centre of Paris, the ship-shaped Île de la Cité is the historical heart of the city. It is about 10 streets long and 5 wide. Eight bridges link it to the riverbanks, and a ninth leads to the Île Saint-Louis (Paris), the smaller island that lies to the southeast. The westernmost bridge is the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), which was built from 1578 to 1604. Despite its name, it is the oldest of the Paris bridges (others predate it but have been rebuilt). Its sturdiness has become axiomatic: Parisians still say that something is “solid as the Pont Neuf.” The bridge, supported in the middle by the tip of the island, extends five arches to the Left Bank and seven to the Right. The parapet corbels are decorated with more than 250 different grotesque masks. The parapet curves out toward the water at each bridge pier, forming half-moon bays along what was the first sidewalk in Paris; in these bays street vendors set up shop. For 200 years this bridge was the main street and the perpetual fair of Paris. Although the structure undergoes regular repair, in the main Pont Neuf as it exists today is the original bridge.

      Downstream and just below the bridge, the tip of the Île de la Cité is fashioned into a triangular gravel-pathed park bordered by flowering bushes, with benches under the ancient trees. It is surrounded by a wide cobbled quay that is especially popular with sunbathers and lovers. Where the steps go onto the bridge from the park, there is a bronze equestrian statue of King Henry IV, who insisted on completion of the Pont Neuf. The statue is an 1818 reproduction of the 1614 original, which was the first statue to stand on a public way in Paris. Opposite is the narrow entrance to the Place Dauphine (1607), named for Henry's heir (le dauphin), the future Louis XIII. The place was formerly a triangle of uniform red-brick houses pointed in white stone, but the row of houses along its base was ripped out in 1871 to make room for construction of part of the Palace of Justice (Palais de Justice).

      The palace of the early Roman governor (now the Palace of Justice) was rebuilt on the same site by King Louis IX (St. Louis) in the 13th century and enlarged 100 years later by Philip IV (the Fair), who added the grim gray-turreted Conciergerie, with its impressive Gothic chambers. The Great Hall (Grand Chambre), which, under the kings, was the meeting place of the Parlement (the high court of justice), was known throughout Europe for its Gothic beauty. Fires in 1618 and 1871 destroyed much of the original room, however, and most of the rest of the palace was devastated by flames in 1776. The Great Hall now serves as a waiting room for the various courts of law housed in the Palace of Justice. In the adjoining first Civil Chamber, the Revolutionary Tribunal sat from 1793, condemning some 2,600 persons to the guillotine. After being sentenced, the victims were taken back down the stone stairs to the dungeons of the Conciergerie to await the tumbrels, the carts that carried them to the place of execution. The Conciergerie still stands and is open to visitors.

 In the palace courtyards is found one of the great monuments of France, the 13th-century Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel). Built at Louis IX's direction between 1243 and 1248, it is a masterpiece of Gothic Rayonnant style. With great daring, the architect (possibly Pierre de Montreuil) poised his vaulted ceilings on a trellis of slender columns, the walls between being made of stained glass. The exquisite chapel was designed to hold the Crown of Thorns (Thorns, Crown of), thought to be the very one worn by Jesus at his crucifixion. Louis IX had purchased the relic from the Venetians, who held it in pawn from Baldwin II Porphyrogenitus, the Latin emperor of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Other holy relics, such as nails and pieces of wood from the True Cross, were added to the chapel's collection, the remnants of which are now in the treasury of Notre-Dame.

      Under King Louis-Philippe, the “sanitization” of the island was begun in the 19th century, and it was continued for his successor, Napoleon III, by Baron Haussmann (Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron). The project involved a mass clearing of antiquated structures, the widening of streets and squares, and the erection of massive new government offices, including parts of the Palace of Justice. The portion of the palace that borders the Quai des Orfèvres—formerly the goldsmiths' and silversmiths' quay—became the headquarters of the Paris municipal detective force, the Police Judiciaire (Judicial Police).

      Across the boulevard du Palais is the Police Prefecture, another 19th-century structure. On the far side of the prefecture is the Place du Parvis-Notre-Dame, an open space enlarged six times by Haussmann, who also moved the Hôtel-Dieu, the first hospital in Paris, from the riverside to the inland side of the square. Its present buildings date from 1868.

Notre-Dame de Paris

 At the eastern end of the Île de la Cité is the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, which is situated on a spot that Parisians have always reserved for the practice of religious rites. The Gallo-Roman boatmen of the cité erected their altar to Jupiter there (it is now in the city's Museum of the Middle Ages), and, when Christianity was established, a church was built on the temple site. The reputed first bishop of Paris, St. Denis (Denis, Saint), became its patron saint. The red in the colours of Paris represents the blood of this martyr, who, in popular legend, after decapitation, picked up his head and walked.

 When Maurice de Sully became bishop in 1159, he decided to replace the decrepit cathedral of Saint-Étienne and the 6th-century Notre-Dame with a church in the new Gothic style. The style was conceived in France, and a new structural development, the flying buttress, which added to the beauty of the exterior and permitted interior columns to soar to new heights, was introduced in the building of Notre-Dame. Construction began in 1163 and continued until 1345.

      After being damaged during the French Revolution, the church was sold at auction to a building-materials merchant. Napoleon I came to power in time to annul the sale, and he ordered that the edifice be redecorated for his coronation as emperor in 1804. King Louis-Philippe later initiated restoration of the neglected church. The architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel) worked from 1845 to 1864 to restore the monument. Like all cathedrals in France, Notre-Dame is the property of the state, although its operation as a religious institution is left entirely to the Roman Catholic Church.

      A few 16th- and 17th-century buildings survive north of the cathedral. They are what remains of the Cloister of the Cathedral Chapter, whose school was famous long before the new cathedral was built. Early in the 12th century one of its theologians, Peter Abelard (Abelard, Peter), left the cloister with his disciples, crossed to the Left Bank, and set up an independent school in the open air in the Convent of the Paraclete near the present-day Place Maubert. After a prolonged struggle with the monks of Saint-Denis, the followers of Abelard in 1200 won the right, from both the king and the pope, to form and govern their own community. This was the beginning of the University of Paris (Paris I–XIII, Universities of).

Île Saint-Louis

      In 1627 Louis XIII granted a 60-year lease on two mudbanks behind the Île de la Cité to a contractor, Christophe Marie, and two financiers. It was 37 years before Marie was able to unite the islets, dike the circumference, lay out a central avenue with 10 lateral streets, and rent space to householders. The church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île was begun the same year, 1664, but one of the finest houses, by Louis Le Vau, had been completed as early as 1640. Another, the Hôtel de Lauzun, a few yards upstream on the Quai d'Anjou, was completed in 1657. The Marie Bridge to the Right Bank, which was completed as part of the contract, is the original span, although it has been modified for modern traffic. The Île Saint-Louis constitutes a tranquil neighbourhood in the centre of the busy city.

The Louvre (Louvre Museum)

 On the Right Bank, just north of the western tip of the Île de la Cité, stands the Louvre, one of the world's largest palaces. Though it was completed only in 1852, it originated in the Middle Ages. Vikings (Viking) camped on the site during their unsuccessful siege of Paris in 885, and in about 1200 King Philip II had a square crusader's castle built on the same site, just outside the new city wall, to buttress the western defenses. Over the following centuries many additions and renovations were made, and from the castle grew the present-day palace. From the original square, known as the Cour Carrée (Square Court), two galleries extend westward for about 1,640 feet (500 metres), one along the river and the other along the rue de Rivoli (Paris). In 1871, only 19 years after the huge oblong was completed, its western face, the Tuileries Palace (begun 1563), was destroyed by the insurrectionists of the Commune of Paris (Paris, Commune of).

      Two of the facades of the Cour Carrée had strong influence on French architecture. Pierre Lescot (Lescot, Pierre) began his inner courtyard facade in 1546, adapting the Renaissance rhythms and orders he had observed in Italy and adding purely French decoration to the classical motifs. The physician and architect Claude Perrault (Perrault, Claude) collaborated with Louis Le Vau, architect to the king, to design the outer east face of the palace in 1673. It too employs classic elements, making especially graceful use of coupled columns and a pediment.

 The Louvre Museum occupies the four sides of the palace around the Cour Carrée as well as portions of the two galleries. Among the treasures of the museum are the Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa. The enormous collections contain works spanning at least 26 centuries, with a huge cultural and geographic spread. The north gallery, along the rue de Rivoli, houses a separate museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), as well as the national finance ministry.

 Extensive remodeling has been undertaken throughout the Louvre to increase space for artworks. Construction in the 1980s created a new main entrance and underground reception hall in the vast Napoleon Courtyard, between the two galleries; the large glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei (Pei, I.M.) to cover the entrance aroused both strong support and spirited criticism.

The “Triumphal Way”

 Northwest from the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (Carrousel Triumphal Arch), located in the courtyard between the open arms of the Louvre, extends one of the most remarkable perspectives to be seen in any modern city. It is sometimes called la Voie Triomphale (“the Triumphal Way”). From the middle of the Carrousel arch, the line of sight runs the length of the Tuileries Gardens, lines up on the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and goes up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (Avenue of the Elysian Fields) to the centre of the city's famed Arc de Triomphe and beyond to the skyscrapers of La Défense, in the western suburbs.

      The Louvre's modest triumphal arch, completed in 1808, stands in the open space where costumed nobles performed in an equestrian display—carrousel—to celebrate the birth of the dauphin (heir to the throne) in 1662. The design of the arch, an imitation of that of the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, was conceived by Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine (Percier, Charles; and Fontaine, Pierre (-François-Léonard)). The flanks of the Carrousel arch are incised with a record of Napoleon I's victories.

 The Tuileries Gardens (Jardin des Tuileries), which fronted the Tuileries Palace (looted and burned in 1871 during the Commune), have not altered much since André Le Nôtre (Le Nôtre, André) redesigned them in 1664. Le Nôtre was born and died in the gardener's cottage in the Tuileries; he succeeded his father there as master gardener. His design carried the line of the central allée beyond the gardens and out into the countryside by tracing a path straight along the wooded hill west of the palace. On this hilltop the famed Arc de Triomphe was completed in 1836.

      At the western edge of the gardens, Napoleon III erected a hothouse, known as the Orangerie, and the Jeu de Paume, an indoor court for tennis. Both eventually were adapted as museums: the Orangerie had a small permanent collection, including a group of 19 of Claude Monet (Monet, Claude)'s paintings of water lilies displayed as panoramas; and the Jeu de Paume housed the Louvre's collection of paintings by the Impressionists (Impressionism) and their forerunners. The collections of the two museums—with the exception of the Monet panoramas—were moved to the Orsay Museum (Musée d'Orsay), which opened across the river in 1986, and the Jeu de Paume and the Orangerie were then reserved for occasional exhibitions.

      The formal exit gate from the Tuileries is flanked by two winged horses, and the entrance to the Champs-Élysées across the square is similarly adorned, only by earthbound horses. In the 18th century both pairs decorated the grounds of the royal Château de Marly (destroyed during the French Revolution). The original winged-horse sculptures were moved to the Louvre in 1986; replicas now stand in their place.

  The Place de la Concorde was designed as a moated octagon in 1755 by Ange-Jacques Gabriel (Gabriel, Ange-Jacques). The river end was left open, and on the inland side two matching buildings were planned. The ground floor was arcaded and the facade nimbly adapted from the Louvre colonnade, all with a refinement typical of the era. Although Gabriel built eight giant pedestals around the periphery of his place, they remained untenanted until the 19th century, when King Louis-Philippe gave them statues representing provincial capitals. Viewed clockwise starting from the Navy Ministry (Ministère de la Marine), the statues symbolize Lille, Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Brest, and Rouen. Louis-Philippe also had the Luxor obelisk, a gift from Egypt, installed in the centre and flanked by two fountains. Later, the surrounding moat was filled in. King Louis XVI was decapitated on Jan. 21, 1793, near the pedestal that now holds the statue of Brest. Four months later the guillotine was erected near the gates of the Tuileries, and the executions continued there for nearly three years.

      Along the first 2,500 feet (750 metres) or so of the Champs-Élysées, between Concorde and the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées (a roundabout, or traffic circle), the avenue is bordered by gardens. The pavilions in the gardens are used as tearooms, restaurants, and theatres. The Grand Palais (Grand Palace) and the Petit Palais (Little Palace), built for the International Exposition of 1900, sit on the south side of the avenue. The buildings are still used for annual shows and for major visiting art exhibits.

      From the Rond-Point up to the Arc de Triomphe, the luxurious town houses that lined the Champs-Élysées in the 19th century were later supplanted by cafés, nightclubs, luxury shops, and cinemas, but the street retained its feeling of luxury, and the tree-shaded sidewalks (as wide as a normal street) offered promenades that were the pride of Paris. Beginning in the 1950s, however, banks, automobile showrooms, airline offices, fast-food eateries, and chain stores (many of them well-known global brands) took over much of the space. Nevertheless, the avenue remains one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world.

 At the top of the Champs-Élysées is a circular place from which 12 imposing avenues radiate to form a star (étoile). It was called Place de l'Étoile from 1753 until 1970, when it was renamed Place Charles de Gaulle. In the centre of the place is the Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon I in 1806. It is twice as high and twice as wide as the Arch of Constantine (Constantine, Arch of), in Rome, which inspired it. Jean Chalgrin (Chalgrin, Jean-François-Thérèse) was the architect, and François Rude (Rude, François) sculpted the frieze and the spirited group The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (called “La Marseillaise”). On Armistice Day in 1920, the Unknown Soldier was buried under the centre of the arch, and each evening the flame of remembrance is rekindled by a different patriotic group.

      In the 1970s the largest concentration of tall buildings in Europe arose some 2 miles (3 km) beyond the arch, on the far side of the suburban wedge of Neuilly-sur-Seine. The quarter, called La Défense, was formerly just a place on the road adjoined by the suburban municipalities of Puteaux, Courbevoie, and Nanterre. Today tall office buildings, heated and air-conditioned from a central plant, are the hub of the complex. The “ground level” between buildings is a raised platform reserved for pedestrians, with roads and parking below. There are shops, restaurants, cafés, hotels, and apartment houses. Before the project was begun, the state had already constructed at La Défense its Centre for New Industries and Technologies (Centre des Nouvelles Industries et Technologies; CNIT), a large exhibition hall. The three municipalities later benefited by the acquisition of low-rise public housing in park settings, a large park, day-care centres for children, and new schools. Nanterre also is the site of a branch of the University of Paris.

Around the Eiffel Tower

 Back within the city limits, south of Place Charles de Gaulle, is the Chaillot Palace (Palais de Chaillot). Standing on a rise on the Right Bank of the Seine, where the river begins its southwestward curve, the palace is an impressive spot from which to view what is arguably the most recognized symbol of Paris, the Eiffel Tower. The palace, which dates from the International Exposition of 1937, replaced the Trocadéro Palace, a structure left over from the 1878 International Exposition. It is made up of two separate pavilions, from each of which extends a curved wing. Several museums, including the Museum of Mankind, the Naval Museum, the Museum of French Monuments, and the Cinema Museum, are located there. Under the terrace that separates the two sections are the National Theatre of Chaillot and a small hall that serves as a motion-picture house of the national film library.

      The terrace, which is lined by statues, gives a splendid view across Paris. The slope descending to the river has been made into a terraced park, the centre of which is alive with fountains, cascades, and pools. The Trocadéro Aquarium (Cinéaqua) is a few steps away in the park. From the bottom of the slope the five-arched Jena Bridge (Pont d'Iéna) leads across the river. It was built for Napoleon I in 1813 to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Jena (Jena, Battle of) in 1806.

 On the Left Bank rises the Eiffel Tower itself, an unclad metal truss tower designed by Gustave Eiffel (Eiffel, Gustave). The tower was built for the International Exposition of 1889, against the strident opposition of national figures who thought it unsafe or ugly or both. When the exposition concession expired in 1909, the 984-foot (300-metre) tower was to have been demolished, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it. Additions made for television transmission added about 79 feet (24 metres) to the height. From the topmost of the three platforms, the view extends for more than 40 miles (64 km).

 From the 2-acre (0.8-hectare) base of the tower, the Champ-de-Mars (Field of Mars), an immense field, stretches to the Military Academy (École Militaire), which was built from 1769 to 1772 and later became the site of the War College (École Supérieure de Guerre). The Champ-de-Mars, which originally served as the school's parade ground, was the scene of two vast rallies during the French Revolution: the Festival of the Federation (1790) and the Festival of the Supreme Being (1794). From 1798 there were annual national expositions of crafts and manufactures, which were followed by world's fairs between 1855 and 1900.

      Behind the Military Academy stands the headquarters of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)). The building, erected in 1958, was designed by an international trio of architects and decorated by artists of member nations.

The Invalides

 One street to the northeast of the Military Academy is the Hôtel des Invalides, founded by King Louis XIV to shelter 7,000 aged or invalid veterans. The enormous range of buildings was completed in five years (1671–76). The gold-plated dome (1675–1706) that rises above the hospital buildings belongs to the church of Saint-Louis. The dome was designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (Mansart, Jules Hardouin-), who employed a style known in France as jésuit (Jesuit)e because it derives from the Jesuits (Jesuit)' first church in Rome, built in 1568. (The churches of the French Academy [Académie Française], the Val-de-Grâce Hospital, and the Sorbonne, as well as three others in Paris, all of the 17th century, also followed this style. By using the classical elements more freely than had been done in Rome, the French made it something recognizably Parisian.)

      In the chapels of Saint-Louis are the tombs of Napoleon I's brothers Joseph and Jérôme, of his son (whose body was returned from Vienna in 1940 by Adolf Hitler), and of the marshals of France. Immediately beneath the cupola is a red porphyry sarcophagus that covers the six coffins, one inside the other, enclosing the remains of Napoleon, which were returned from the island of St. Helena (Saint Helena) in 1840 through the efforts of King Louis-Philippe. Napoleon's uniforms, personal arms, and deathbed are displayed in the Army Museum (Musée de l'Armée) at the front of the Invalides. A portion of the Invalides still serves as a military hospital.

 The vast tree-lined Invalides Esplanade slopes gently to the Quai d'Orsay and the Alexandre III Bridge. The first stone for the bridge, which commemorates the Russian tsar Alexander III, was laid in 1897 by Alexander's son, Tsar Nicholas II. The bridge was finished in time for the International Exposition of 1900, and it leads to two other souvenirs of that year's fair, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.

The ministry quarter

      Running along the river from the Eiffel Tower to the Carrousel Bridge is an area of the Left Bank known as the ministry quarter. Most of the national ministries are located there, along with the headquarters of the Île-de-France region and the National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale). The arrondissement is the old Faubourg Saint-Germain, an impeccable address since the early 18th century. As such, it was subject to heavy expropriation during the French Revolution, and ministries are lodged mostly in splendid old mansions and convents. Although imposing, these have been difficult to adapt to the needs of modern administration. When it has proved impractical to spread into adjacent buildings or to construct annexes in the garden, branches have been installed wherever space can be found. Some of the ministries occupy as many as 25 separate buildings.

      Probably the best known of all ministries is the low-built, ornate Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères), on the Quai d'Orsay between the Invalides Esplanade and the National Assembly. The address “Quai d'Orsay” has become a synonym for the ministry.

      The National Assembly is housed in the Bourbon Palace (1722–28), which was seized during the Revolution. Succeeding regimes added bits and pieces onto the old palace, including the Greek peristyle facing the river as ordered in 1807 by Napoleon I.

 The old, disused Orsay railway station near the river was renovated and in 1986 was reopened as the Orsay Museum (Musée d'Orsay) of 19th-century art and civilization. It contains, among other collections, the Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings—by Paul Cézanne (Cézanne, Paul), Édouard Manet (Manet, Édouard), Claude Monet (Monet, Claude), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Renoir, Pierre-Auguste), Vincent van Gogh (Gogh, Vincent van), and others—that were formerly in the Jeu de Paume (Paris).

The Institute of France

      East of the Orsay Museum, at the point where the Arts Bridge (Pont des Arts) meets the Left Bank, stands the Institute of France (Institut de France), which since 1806 has housed the five French academies. The site was originally occupied by the Nesle Tower (Tour de Nesle), a defense work for the Left Bank terminus of the city wall of 1220. Louis Le Vau designed the additional buildings in 1663 to house the College of the Four Nations (Collège des Quatre-Nations), paid for by a legacy from Louis XIV's minister Cardinal Mazarin (Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal), who had brought the four entities in question—Pignerol (Pinerolo, in the Italian Piedmont), Alsace, Artois, and northern Catalonia (the Cerdagne [Cerdaña] and Roussillon regions)—under the French crown. Le Vau based his designs on Italian models. The five contemporary academies are the French Academy, founded by Cardinal de Richelieu (Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de) in 1635, which edits the official French dictionary, awards literary prizes, and has a membership of “40 Immortals”; the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, founded in 1663 by Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Colbert, Jean-Baptiste); the Academy of Sciences (Sciences, Academy of), founded in 1666, also by Colbert; the Academy of Fine Arts, two sections formed at different times by Mazarin and Colbert and joined in 1795; and the Academy of Ethics and Political Science, created by the National Convention (a governing body during the French Revolution) in 1795 to ponder questions of philosophy, economics, politics, law, and history.

      Almost next door is the Mint (Hôtel des Monnaies). In this sober late 18th-century building, visitors may tour a museum of coins and medals.

      The Arts Bridge leads from the Institute of France across the Seine to the Louvre. One of the most charming of all the Parisian bridges, it was the first (1803) to be made of iron, and it has always been reserved for pedestrians; it provides an intimate view of riverside Paris and of the Seine itself.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter

      South of the city centre are the quintessential Left Bank neighbourhoods known as Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter (Quartier Latin). The boulevard Saint-Germain itself begins at the National Assembly building, curving eastward to join the river again at the Sully Bridge. A little less than halfway along the boulevard is the pre-Gothic church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The old church, which belonged to a Benedictine abbey founded in the 8th century, was sacked four times by Vikings and was rebuilt between 990 and 1201. Parts of the present church date from that time.

      This portion of the Left Bank has long been a gathering place for practitioners of the arts. The dramatist Jean Racine (Racine, Jean) died there in 1699; the painter Eugène Delacroix (Delacroix, Eugène) had his studio in the Place Fürstemberg; publishing houses moved in during the 19th century; and the principal cafés have been meeting places for artists, writers, and publishers ever since. From 1945 to about 1955 it was the hub of the Existentialist (Existentialism) movement and an associated revival of bohemianism. It is still a lively centre for literature, food, and conversation.

      Straight north from the crossroads at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church is the National School of Fine Arts (École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Beaux-Arts, École des)), the state school of painting and sculpture, on the Quai Malaquais. Two streets south of the crossroads is the church of Saint-Sulpice (1646–1780), the work of six successive architects. The street alongside the church is sprinkled with shops specializing in devotional statuary, much of it on the aesthetic level of tourist souvenirs and known in France as “Saint Sulpicerie.” Eastward to the boulevard Saint-Michel, the area toward the river from the boulevard Saint-Germain is a tangle of narrow, animated streets, which typify the tourist's idea of a vivacious and noisy Paris.

 East of the boulevard Saint-Michel is the university precinct, self-governing under the kings, where, in class and out, students and teachers spoke Latin until 1789 (hence the name Quartier Latin). At the junction of the boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel are the remains of one of the three baths of the Roman city. These are in the grounds of the National Museum of the Middle Ages (Musée National du Moyen Âge), housed in the Hôtel de Cluny (Cluny Museum), a Gothic mansion (1485–1500) that holds a collection of medieval works of art, including the renowned six-panel tapestry La Dame à la licorne (“The Lady and the Unicorn”).

      The wide straight boulevard Saint-Michel is the main street of the student quarter. It is lined with bookshops, cafés, cafeterias, and movie houses. The buildings of the university are found on smaller streets. The university was built up of colleges, each founded and supported by a donor, often a prelate or a religious order. In about 1257 Robert de Sorbon (Sorbon, Robert de), chaplain to Louis IX, established a college, known as the Sorbonne (Paris I–XIII, Universities of), that eventually became the centre of theological study in France. The oldest part of the Sorbonne is the chapel (1635–42), the gift of Cardinal de Richelieu (Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de), who is buried there. It was designed by Jacques Lemercier (Lemercier, Jacques) and was one of a number of new domed Jesuit-style churches of the period.

      The Sorbonne served for centuries as the administrative seat of the University of Paris (Paris I–XIII, Universities of). Following mass student protests in 1968, the university was divided into a number of entirely separate universities, and the Sorbonne building proper continues to serve as the premises for some of these. Other faculties, schools, and institutes have moved to more-spacious sites in the city and suburbs in an effort to ease the overcrowding of the Paris student milieu.

      The independent College of France (France, Collège de) (Collège de France) was set up a few steps from the university by King Francis I in 1529 to offer a more liberal, modern curriculum than the narrow theology and Latin of the Sorbonne. Bestowing no degrees, it always has had a superb faculty of well-known specialists, especially in philosophy, literature, and the sciences.

      At the top of the hill rising from the river, the boulevard Saint-Michel skirts the Luxembourg Gardens, the remains of the park of Marie De Médicis' Luxembourg Palace (1616–21), which now houses the French Senate. The gardens are planted with chestnuts and are enhanced with a pond for toy sailboats, a marionette theatre, and statuary.

      East of the gardens at the end of the rue Soufflot stands the 18th-century Panthéon building, designed by Jacques-Germain Soufflot (Soufflot, Jacques-Germain). It was commissioned by King Louis XV, after his recovery from an illness, as a votive offering to St. Geneviève (Geneviève, Saint) and was to replace the mouldering 5th-century abbey in her name. Though intended as the principal church in Paris, it was renamed the Panthéon by the Revolutionary authorities, who made it the last resting place for heroes of the French Revolution. The walling up of a number of its windows and the removal of much interior decoration replaced the intended effect of a light interior space with a gloomy dignity. Among those buried under the inscription “Aux grands hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante” (“To great men, [from] their grateful homeland”) are the authors Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques), Victor Hugo (Hugo, Victor), and Émile Zola (Zola, Émile), as well as Jean Moulin (Moulin, Jean), chief of the Resistance in World War II.

      Northwest of the Panthéon is a steep street named the rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. It was the paved road to Italy in Roman times. The hill leads down to the lively market square of Place Maubert and a tangle of ancient, picturesque riverside streets. The best known of these is the medieval rue de la Huchette, from which the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche (“Street of the Fishing Cat”) leads to the Quai Saint-Michel. Two churches in this area—Saint-Séverin (1489–94), Gothic and humble, and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre (1165–1220), which belongs to the transitional period between the Romanesque and the Gothic—are notable. The square in front of the latter church offers one of the finest views of Notre-Dame de Paris.

The Rue de Rivoli and Right Bank environs

      North of the city centre, a few streets away from the Seine and running roughly parallel to the river, is the rue de Rivoli. At its eastern end the street fronts the Hôtel de Ville (Paris) and the Saint-Jacques bell tower (Tour Saint-Jacques), all that remains of a church in the Flamboyant Gothic style that was torn down in 1797. Farther west, the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens occupy a long stretch of land between the street and the river. On the north side of the street is an arcade more than 1 mile (1.6 km) long.

 Opposite the middle of the Louvre, the Place du Palais-Royal leads to the palace of Cardinal de Richelieu (Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de), which he willed to the royal family. Louis XIV lived there as a child, and during the minority of Louis XV the kingdom was ruled from there by the debauched regent Philippe II, duc d'Orléans (Orléans, Philippe II, duc d'), from 1715 to 1723. Late in the 18th century Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d'Orléans (Orléans, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d'), who was popularly renamed Philippe-Egalité during the French Revolution for his radical opinions, undertook extensive building around the palace garden. It was a commercial operation, and the prince hoped to pay his debts from the property rents. Around the garden he built a beautiful oblong of colonnaded galleries and at each end of the gallery farthest from his residence a theatre. The larger playhouse has been the home of the Comédie-Française, the state theatre company, since Napoleon I's reign. The princely apartments now shelter high state bodies such as the Conseil d'État (Council of State).

 The Parisian city planner Baron Haussmann (Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron) greatly enlarged the Place du Palais-Royal in 1852, and he was careful to preserve the palace when he laid out the avenue de l'Opéra. At the top of this avenue, a grand opera house was built from 1825 to 1898. The Paris Opera House (Opéra) (l'Opéra (Opéra), or Palais Garnier), a splendid monument to the Second Empire (Second Empire style), was designed in the neo-Baroque style by Charles Garnier (Garnier, Charles). It is known especially for its decorative embellishments, chief among them the Grand Staircase. Just behind the Opera House are various large department stores.

      The next place along the rue de Rivoli is the Place des Pyramides. The gilded equestrian statue of Joan of Arc (Joan of Arc, Saint) stands not far from where she was wounded at the Saint-Honoré Gate (Porte Saint-Honoré) in her unsuccessful attack on Paris (at that time held by the English), on Sept. 8, 1429.

      Farther west, toward the Place de la Concorde, the rue de Castiglione leads from the rue de Rivoli to the Place Vendôme, an elegant octagonal place, little changed from the 1698 designs of Jules Hardouin-Mansart (Mansart, Jules Hardouin-). In the centre, the Vendôme Column bears a statue of Napoleon I. It was pulled down during the Commune of 1871 (Paris, Commune of) and put back up under the Third Republic (1871–1940). The Place Vendôme and the adjacent rue de la Paix, which enters the place opposite the rue de Castiglione, have lost none of their discreet distinction, nor have their shops.

 The rue de Rivoli ends at the Place de la Concorde. Between the twin buildings on the northeastern side of the place, the broad rue Royale mounts to the Madeleine, consecrated in 1842. This church is a stern oblong, fenced with columns approximately 65 feet (20 metres) high. Its design, supposedly that of a Greek temple, is actually closer to the Roman notion of Greek architecture. To the west off the rue Royale runs the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. In addition to the British embassy and the Élysée Palace (residence of the French president), it has on its shop windows some of the most prestigious names in the Paris fashion trade.

      At the Place de la Madeleine begin the Grands Boulevards, which arch eastward through the Right Bank to the Place de la République. The glittering chic of these contiguous boulevards—Madeleine, Capucines, Italiens, Montmartre, Poissonnière, Bonne Nouvelle, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Martin—flavoured Paris life from the 1750s to the 1880s. Many of this epoch's theatres and other entertainments survive. The Opéra Comique stands fast just off the boulevard des Italiens; the Grévin wax museum survives on the boulevard Montmartre; and, a few doors away, the Théâtre des Variétés, founded under the Second Empire by the composer Jacques Offenbach (Offenbach, Jacques), still operates. The Théâtre de la Renaissance, where the actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin (Coquelin, Benoît-Constant) created the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897, remains on the boulevard Saint-Martin. The Théâtre de l'Ambigu, where Frédéric Lemaître, the celebrated actor in boulevard melodrama, thrilled all Paris in the mid-19th century, was demolished in the 1960s.

The Hôtel de Ville

      Back in the city centre, the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) is situated on the Right Bank, just across from the eastern end of the Île de la Cité. It contains the official apartments of the mayor of Paris. Three city halls have stood on the site of the present building, each grander than its predecessor. The first was the House of Pillars (Maison aux Piliers), used by the municipality from 1357 to 1533. The present-day Hôtel de Ville (1874–82) replaced the Renaissance structure that was in use from the 16th century until 1871, when it was burned by the insurrectionary Communards.

      The first two buildings sat on the Place de Grève (grève meaning “strand” or “bank”), which was the principal port of Paris for centuries. (The refusal of boatmen to work gave the French their phrase for going on strike: faire la grève.) The name of this square was changed in 1830 to Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. From 1310 to 1832 it was Paris's principal place of execution.

      The second Hôtel de Ville was the focus of numerous popular uprisings, including the revolutions of 1789 (French Revolution), 1830 (1830, Revolutions of), and 1848 (1848, Revolutions of) and the Commune of Paris (Paris, Commune of) of 1871. The current building played a prominent role during the liberation of the city from German occupation in 1944.

      In July 1789, already having taken the Invalides and the Bastille, the Revolutionary mob captured the Hôtel de Ville. Three days afterward Louis XVI appeared on the balcony wearing a tricolour cockade (blue, white, and red; a symbol of the Revolution) and was cheered by the crowd. The building later was taken as headquarters for the city's Revolutionary government (the Paris Commune of 1792), which directed mob action to control the National Convention, the governing assembly of France at the time. On July 27, 1794, the Convention's guards entered the Hôtel de Ville and seized the radical leader Maximilien de Robespierre (Robespierre, Maximilien de) and his followers; all were executed soon after. Following the July Revolution of 1830, the new king Louis-Philippe appeared on the Hôtel de Ville's balcony and was acclaimed by the revolutionary crowd.

      In 1871, after Napoleon III's defeat at Sedan during the Franco-German War, a new French republic was declared from the steps of the Hôtel de Ville; however, when the national government in its turn capitulated, Parisians refused to accept defeat and in March formed the Commune of Paris. In May national troops entered the city and fought sharp engagements with the Communards, who set fire to the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries Palace, the Palace of Justice, the Police Prefecture, the Arsenal, and other government buildings. Approximately 20,000 Parisians were killed during the fighting.

      In 1944, as the city was being liberated from the Germans, the National Council of Resistance (Conseil National de la Résistance) made the Hôtel de Ville its headquarters. At the climax of the liberation, Gen. Charles de Gaulle (Gaulle, Charles de) appeared on the balcony and was acclaimed by the crowd.

The Bastille

      The road off the upper end of the Île Saint-Louis leads to the Place de la Bastille on the Right Bank. From the river to the place runs a canal, the Arsenal Basin, which formerly supplied water to the moat around the Bastille fortress. At the Place de la Bastille the waterway goes underground for almost 1 mile (1.6 km) and then emerges to form the Saint-Martin Canal, which, with its bridges and locks and its barges sailing slowly down the centre of city streets, constitutes one of the least-known and most picturesque sections of Paris.

 The Bastille was used as a state prison from the 17th century. Its capture by a mob on July 14, 1789, during the early years of the French Revolution, was a symbolic blow at tyranny rather than an act of liberation for tyranny's victims. The prison had been virtually unused for years and was scheduled for demolition by the monarchy; it held on that day only four counterfeiters, two madmen, and a young aristocrat who had displeased his father. The Bastille was demolished after its capture.

      The future emperor Napoleon I had the place laid out in 1803. A railway station was built there in 1859. The station was razed in 1984 to allow construction of a new opera house, the Opéra Bastille (inaugurated 1989).

      The neighbourhood between the Bastille and the Place de la Nation, eastward along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, has been one of skilled craftsmen since the mid-15th century, when the self-governing royal abbey gave space within its wide domains to those cabinetmakers who refused to abide by the restrictions of Paris guilds as to styles and types of wood to be used. This neighbourhood was always among the first to revolt when revolution was in the air and was noted for the speed with which it raised barricades of impressive height. The character of the area has changed, however, as most of the small workshops have closed.

The Marais

      To the west of the Bastille lies a triangular area with its base along the river up to the Hôtel de Ville and its apex just short of the Place de la République to the north. It keeps its name—le marais (“the marsh”)—from the Middle Ages, and, because it became the market garden of Paris, it gave its name to all market gardening (la culture maraîchère; also called truck farming, or the production of vegetables for the market) in France.

      Extension of the city walls along the Right Bank led to diking of the shore and drainage of the soil. In 1107 the Knights Templar (Templar) established Le Temple (Temple, Le), a vast fortified enclosure, at the top of the triangle. In 1360 the future king Charles V moved into his new royal residence in the lower right-hand corner, where the rue des Lions marks the former location of the menageries.

      King Charles VII preferred to live just behind the Bastille, in the Hôtel des Tournelles, which Henry II had had enlarged and beautified by Philibert Delorme (Delorme, Philibert) in 1550. Great nobles, such as the dukes of Guise and Lorraine, followed the king and had palaces built in the vicinity. When Henry II was killed in a joust on the rue Saint-Antoine in 1559, his widow, Catherine de Médicis, had the Tournelles razed. On the site in 1607 construction began on the first residential square to be designed in Paris. Henry IV reserved a house there for himself. The three-story houses are made of red brick with white-stone quoins (solid-corner angles) and window surrounds, and the ground floors form arcades over the sidewalks. The square was named Place Royale, but since 1800 it has been called Place des Vosges. Another wave of building by the rich, eager to be close to a royal project, endowed the Marais with 200 more private palaces.

      In 1792 the Hospitallers (also known as the Knights of Malta) were turned out of Le Temple, which had been given to them in 1313 when the Templar order was dissolved. The temple became state property, and in August 1792 the royal family was incarcerated in the temple's tower keep. Louis XVI was taken off to his death on Jan. 21, 1793, and Queen Marie-Antoinette was removed to the Conciergerie that August (and executed on October 16). The temple's tower was leveled in 1808 to discourage rallies there by royalists.

      After the 17th-century construction boom the Marais remained virtually untouched. Toward the end of the 19th century, while some of the oldest and most imposing of the palaces were being demolished by private developers, other owners managed to restore a few mansions, and the French and Parisian governments also restored a handful of fine buildings. However, as many Jewish refugees from eastern Europe settled in the district, scores of houses were subdivided into tiny apartments for the poverty-stricken newcomers, and workshops were installed on the lower floors and in courtyard sheds. The Marais gradually became one of the worst slums in Paris.

 In 1969 the municipal council approved an urban renewal scheme for ending slum conditions while preserving the workaday life and animation and restoring the undeniable beauty of the quarter. The scheme was very successful, and property prices in the Marais have soared. Among the restored ancient buildings open to the public are the Museum of the History of Paris (Hôtel de Carnavalet), built in 1545 and enlarged by François Mansart (Mansart, François) in 1645; the Museum of the History of France (National Archives, Hôtel de Soubise), parts of which date from 1375, 1553, and 1704–15; the Museum of Hunting and Nature (Hôtel de Guénégaud des Brosses), built by Mansart in 1648–51; the National Bureau of Historic Monuments (Hôtel de Sully), by Jean I Androuet du Cerceau (see du Cerceau family (Cerceau, du, family)); and the Picasso Museum (Hôtel Salé).

      Closer to the Hôtel de Ville is the Gothic Hôtel de Sens, built at the end of the 15th century for the bishops of Sens, then also bishops of Paris. It was restored after 40 years of work and now serves as a city library of specialized collections. Nearby, behind facades of a much later date, two half-timbered medieval houses have been uncovered. Portions of the 13th-century city wall, including one of the watchtowers, still may be seen in the quarter as well.

      On the western fringe of the Marais is the Georges Pompidou National Centre for Art and Culture (Pompidou Centre), popularly called Centre Pompidou (Pompidou Centre), a vast glass-and-metal structure of distinctive design inaugurated in 1977. It soon proved its popularity and remains a successful attraction for Parisians and tourists alike. The centre houses the National Museum of Modern Art, temporary exhibits, the multimedia Public Reference Library, the Industrial Design Centre, the Institute for Acoustic and Musical Research, and workshops for children.

The Halles

      Several streets northwest of the Hôtel de Ville is the quarter of the Halles, which was from 1183 to 1969 the central market (ultimately a wholesale market for fresh products) of Paris. When the market moved out to a new location at Rungis, near the Paris-Orly airport, the quarter's distinctive 19th-century iron-and-glass market halls (10 originals, designed by Victor Baltard and built between 1854 and 1866, and two 1936 reproductions) and their neighbourhood were designated for renewal. The renewal projects were delayed for several years, however, by bitter disagreements over how the area should be used. The old market halls were used temporarily for exhibitions and cultural events, but in 1971 they were torn down. Their demolition left an enormous hole in the ground that became a symbol to many Parisians of the end of an era. Construction at the site began in 1971, and in 1977 a station linking the city's subway system (the Métro) with the regional express system was opened. The Forum des Halles, a partly subterranean multistoried commercial and shopping centre, was opened in 1979, and the nearby streets were converted to a traffic-free zone for pedestrians. The Forum never became popular, however, and many complained about the area's preponderance of fast-food restaurants and illicit drug dealers. In the early 21st century the city planned to renovate the site once again.

      A few of the neighbourhood's old houses were renovated or restored to keep some of the old flavour. The church of Saint-Eustache (1532–1637) remains, as does the circular Grain Exchange (Halle au Blé; 1811–13), which was burned by the Commune of 1871 and restored in the 1880s as the Commercial Exchange (Bourse de Commerce).

The Buttes

      The river valley of Paris is almost entirely circled by high ground. Upon the heights of Passy, on the Right Bank between the western city limits and the Arc de Triomphe, perch the wealthy neighbourhoods of the 16th arrondissement. By contrast, the Butte-Montmartre (18th arrondissement) and the Buttes-Chaumont (19th arrondissement), which rise along the northern rim of the city, are historically working-class areas that have attracted a significant population of immigrants.

      From the early 19th century until the migration in the 1920s to Montparnasse, Montmartre was the major art colony of Paris. Some sections are highly commercialized for the tourist trade; others, however, contain unself-consciously picturesque features—such as the neighbourhood's winding lanes, some of which become stairways on the steeper hills. Montmartre also is known for its nightclubs and entertainment.

      The most noted landmark of Montmartre was built only in 1919: the Sacred Heart Basilica (Basilique du Sacré-Coeur), paid for by national subscription after the French defeat by the Prussians in 1870, during the Franco-German War. The work began in 1876 but was delayed by the death of the architect, Paul Abadie, who took inspiration from the 12th-century five-domed Romanesque church of Saint-Front in Périgueux, itself inspired by either Venetian or Byzantine churches. Alongside the monumental terraced stairway of the garden-planted Square Willette below the church entrance runs the only funicular railway in Paris.

      On the northeastern edge of the city proper, at La Villette in the 19th arrondissement, the giant structure of the old city abattoirs, out of use since 1974, was reopened in 1986 as a science museum (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie). Nearby are a spherical panoramic cinema building (La Géode) and a large leisure park and culture complex.

      On the Buttes-Chaumont just to the east of Montmartre is the Buttes-Chaumont Park, which was created under the city planner Baron Haussmann (Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron) in 1864–67. A bare hill, half hollowed out by abandoned tunnel quarries and filled with the refuse of generations, was turned into a romantic landscape with a lake, a waterfall, a grotto, winding woodland paths, and picturesque bridges. It is the largest public park within Paris.

 This portion of the 19th arrondissement is known as Belleville, a formerly independent village that stretches south into the 20th arrondissement. The 20th also is home to the Ménilmontant neighbourhood and Père-Lachaise Cemetery—the site of the Federalists' Wall (Mur des Fédérés), against which the last of the fighters of the Commune of Paris (Paris, Commune of) were shot in 1871 and to which pilgrimages are still made. Among the well-known people buried in the cemetery are Haussmann, Frédéric Chopin (Chopin, Frédéric), Michel Ney (Ney, Michel, Duc D'elchingen, Prince De La Moskowa), Alfred de Musset (Musset, Alfred de), Honoré de Balzac (Balzac, Honoré de), Eugène Delacroix (Delacroix, Eugène), Georges Bizet (Bizet, Georges), Gioachino Rossini (Rossini, Gioachino), Sarah Bernhardt (Bernhardt, Sarah), Isadora Duncan (Duncan, Isadora), Colette, and Edith Piaf (Piaf, Edith).

Modern business quarters

      As a counterbalance to the march of office buildings westward to La Défense (Paris) and beyond, and as part of the effort to limit the obliteration of residential quarters around the business centre of the city, other “poles of attraction” were instituted in several parts of Paris, beginning in the late 1960s. Two of these are directly on the waterfront at each end of Paris: Front de Seine (“Seine Waterfront”) in the southwest corner and Austerlitz-Bercy-Lyon in the southeast corner. Another, Maine-Montparnasse, is located in south-central Paris.

      The Front de Seine is on the Left Bank, between the Eiffel Tower and the southern city limits. Here a neighbourhood of factories and substandard housing was replaced by a spread of high-rise buildings used for offices and apartments.

      The business quarter straddling the opposite end of the river features office buildings around the Austerlitz (Left Bank) and the Lyon (Right Bank) railroad stations. Bercy, which lies directly on the river on the Right Bank, was until this development one of the “secret cities” of Paris. This was the village of vintages, where merchants stored and sold their stocks of wine. Fenced and guarded, its chalets lined cobbled lanes named for the great vineyard districts of France. The great oaks, it was said, flourished because their roots were soaked in wine. The Bercy area, redeveloped on a large scale, now has many large office blocks and a sports and entertainment arena.

      The centrepiece of the Maine-Montparnasse district is a 59-story office tower on the site of the old Montparnasse railway station. A more compact station was built one street away on the avenue du Maine, where the rails are hidden on three sides by buildings 15 to 18 stories high. The units are joined by a raised platform that serves as a “ground level” above the street.

Blake Ehrlich John Anthony Charles Ardagh

People

      In 1850 Paris had approximately 600,000 inhabitants. It then grew rapidly as industrial expansion attracted a constant stream of people from the provinces. By 1870 the population had surpassed 1,000,000, and by 1931 the conurbation contained some 5,000,000 people, more than half of them living in the city of Paris, the administrative city within the old gates. After World War II this growth continued, and Greater Paris by the turn of the 21st century had close to 10,000,000 inhabitants. The population of the city of Paris, however, steadily declined, from a peak of about 2,900,000 in 1931 to roughly 2,100,000 in 1999, so that about four out of five Parisians were suburbanites. The shift took place in part because massive rehousing reduced the city's high density, though it remained well above the northern European average. Many families moved out to newer and more spacious homes in the smaller towns around the capital, leaving the city of Paris with an aging, curiously solitary population, with almost half of the households consisting of just one person. Yet within the first few years of the 21st century, the city's population slowly began to increase. With birth rates rising and older persons tending to retire outside the capital region, the Parisian population also grew younger.

      Paris-born Parisians are outnumbered by those born outside the city, many of whom keep their provincial or international ties. Hence, many shops, restaurants, and neighbourhoods have a French regional or international flavour. While most nonnative Parisians are French, more than one-tenth of the population is foreign-born. About a third of the city's foreign residents are from European Union member countries, but the largest immigrant groups are peoples of African origin—particularly Muslim Arabs from the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. In general, families of North African origin cluster in the poorer northern quarters or, increasingly, in the peripheral housing developments surrounding the capital; in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, their presence has given rise to racial and religious tensions and conflicts. The sizable black population is made up of immigrants from the French overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe as well as from West and Central African countries such as Senegal, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of these immigrants inhabit the northeastern portions of Paris, as do people of Chinese and Turkish origin. Immigrant groups from Southeast Asia are concentrated in southeastern Paris.

      Most of the population is nominally Roman Catholic, though only a small percentage attend Mass regularly. Muslims are an important presence in the city, as evidenced by its dozens of mosques, including the Grande Mosquée de Paris (1922–26) in the 5th arrondissement. The Jewish community is centred on the rue des Rosiers quarter of the Marais neighbourhood, where there are numerous synagogues, kosher stores, and Hebrew bookshops.

Economy

      Paris is not only the political and cultural capital of France but also its major financial and commercial centre. Despite some pockets of poverty, it is a very wealthy city, home to many vast private fortunes, both French and foreign. It serves as the base for numerous international business concerns, and even if large French firms have their manufacturing plants in the provinces, they nearly all keep their headquarters in Paris, conveniently close to the major banks and key ministries. Greater Paris does still contain a significant portion of French manufacturing concerns, but as an industrial centre the Île-de-France region is less dominant in France than it was in its heyday in the 1930s. Today more than four-fifths of the region's workforce is employed in the services sector, notably in business services and public- and private-sector administration and commerce. This proportion is even higher in the city of Paris itself. As a whole, the region is characterized by an above-average concentration of senior management and administrative and research personnel.

Manufacturing

      It was largely because it was already the political capital, with firms thus attracted to it, that Paris became an actively industrial city in the 19th century. Unlike other older French industrial areas, such as Lorraine and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, it was not near mineral resources. But it did have some natural assets of its own, notably the Seine River, which is still used for barge traffic moving principally between the capital and the downstream ports of Rouen and Le Havre. Traditional industries were devoted mainly to handicrafts and luxury goods, but, when the growth of railways and canals in the 19th century made the northern coalfields more accessible, heavier industries began to develop. These soon spread beyond the city into the new industrial suburbs. To the northwest, along the Seine's loop from Suresnes to Gennevilliers, armaments factories, heavy engineering works, and chemical plants were created, and automobile and aircraft factories eventually were established in the Seine valley toward Rouen.

      More recently, manufacturing has developed principally in the capital's outer ring, particularly in strategic sites such as the area around the Roissy–Charles de Gaulle airport (northeast of Paris) or newer suburban towns. The nature of industry also has changed. Many traditional activities, such as metallurgy, food processing, and printing, progressively disappeared, while electronics, telecommunications, and other high-technology industries gained emphasis. These have become located preferentially in a broad arc to the southwest of Paris, stretching from Versailles southeast to Évry.

      For much of the period between 1950 and 1980, the policy of successive French governments was to limit the industrial growth of the Paris region in favour of the provinces. The policy also was used to effect a better distribution of industry within the region, with the aim of favouring the development of new towns. The idea of restraining industry in Paris itself had lost currency by the end of the 20th century, however, as the central and inner areas of the capital already had been largely deindustrialized. Nevertheless, the city of Paris is still the home of many small-scale but typically Parisian activities: haute couture, notably on the avenue Montaigne and the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré; the clothing industry, in the Sentier quarter; jewelry, in the Place Vendôme and the rue de la Paix; and furniture making, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Finance and other services

 The major French banks, insurance companies, and other financial bodies are all centred in Paris, predominantly in the main financial quarter on the Right Bank around the Stock Exchange (Palais de la Bourse) and the central offices of the Banque de France (France, Banque de). Scores of foreign multiservice banks also have branches in Paris. In 2000 the Paris Stock Exchange merged with the Amsterdam and Brussels exchanges to form the Euronext equities market, which in turn merged with the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

      After World War II, Paris developed greatly as a centre for international business and commerce, especially in the new skyscraper quarter of La Défense (just west of the city, in the Hauts-de-Seine département), where many large company headquarters are situated. The centre of the capital also houses many businesses, as do numerous other towns in Hauts-de-Seine and the rest of the Île-de-France region. In addition, Paris is one of the world's most popular sites for international business conferences. It has several major modern convention centres, notably the Palais des Congrès at the Maillot Gate (Porte Maillot), as well as important exhibition facilities, including those at Villepinte in the northern suburbs.

      It was the French who invented the modern department store (grand magasin), with the opening of the Bon Marché on the Left Bank in the 19th century. Other quintessential grands magasins, such as Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, are found on the Right Bank. Numerous shopping centres also have been built in various central and suburban locations. In the 1960s the major food and wine wholesale markets were transferred from their central locations at the Halles on the Right Bank and the Halle aux Vins (the wine market) on the Left Bank to new and more spacious homes in the suburbs.

Transportation

      The Paris public transport system, operated by a body that is largely state-controlled, has been modernized and extended since the early 1970s. The underground rail network is now regarded as being among the finest of the world's major cities. Trains on the principal lines of the Métropolitain (Métro) subway system, first opened in 1900, are fast and frequent. Over many years, lines have been extended into the suburbs, and in 1998 a new, fully automatic line was opened to serve central areas of the city. The Réseau Express Régional (RER), a high-speed express subway system comprising cross-Paris routes, extends far into the suburbs, and at some points its lines have been integrated with the main-line railway network. The hub of the system is Châtelet–Les-Halles, said to be the world's largest and busiest underground station. The city's transport system also features an extensive bus service and tram lines.

      Improvements in public transport have been part of official campaigns to ease traffic problems by discouraging the daily use of automobiles for commuting. Nevertheless, the volume of traffic remains high, and congestion is widespread. A riverside expressway (Voie Georges Pompidou) runs along the Right Bank, and another expressway, the boulevard périphérique, encircles the city. This expressway is linked with suburban and national highways, of which Paris is the hub.

      Similarly, the large Paris railway terminals serve the French railway network, first built in the 19th century. High-speed trains (trains à grande vitesse; TGV) link the capital with most parts of France; they also run from Paris to London, via the Channel Tunnel, and to neighbouring countries on the Continent.

      The main international airport is Roissy–Charles de Gaulle, to the northeast; the older Orly airport, to the south, is used mainly for domestic and charter flights. The Seine River carries barges and pleasure traffic; there are commercial ports both upstream and downstream from the city.

Administration and society

Government

      A sharp distinction is drawn between city administration and suburban administration. The city of Paris is a single political unit—a commune—governed by an elected mayor and council, like any other French commune down to the smallest village. The suburbs consist of more than 1,200 separate communes, large and small, which together with the city of Paris form the administrative region of Île-de-France. The Île-de-France region, with an area of about 4,640 square miles (12,000 square km), extends far beyond the Paris conurbation. The urban area of Greater Paris is therefore not a political unit, and coordination is frequently poor between Paris and its inner suburbs. Because of the fierce rivalries between left-wing and right-wing communes, it has never been possible to follow the pattern of other major world cities and create a federated urban district.

      Île-de-France is the most populous of France's 22 regions. The region consists of eight départements: Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, Val-d'Oise, Seine-et-Marne, and Paris. Under the socialist government's devolutionary reforms of 1982–86, Île-de-France, like the other regions, was given a certain degree of autonomy. It has a directly elected assembly with a chairman and executive; it can raise its own taxes; and it has responsibility for adult education and for some aspects of culture, tourism, road building, planning, and aid for industrial development. The directly elected representatives of the eight départements also have been given increased responsibilities: they run the welfare and social services, involving large budgets, as well as controlling some matters concerning the infrastructure. The communes in turn look after their own town planning and building. Each département is supervised by a state-appointed prefect and Île-de-France by a regional prefect.

      The city of Paris itself has a curious history of local government. The municipal Council of Paris (Conseil de Paris) is elected by the people every six years. From 1871 to 1977 the council had no mayor and was controlled directly by the departmental prefect, so that Paris had less autonomy than any village. The national government, worried by memories of the uprisings of 1789 (the French Revolution), 1848 (the Revolution of 1848 (1848, Revolutions of)), and 1871 (the Commune of Paris (Paris, Commune of)), wanted to keep power from the Paris populace. A statute passed in 1975, however, permitted the councillors once again to elect their own mayor. The mayor now has the same status and powers as mayors in other French towns. The first mayoral election was held in 1977. In 1982 a ward system was introduced, whereby each of the 20 arrondissements was given its own mayor and local council. In practice, however, real control remains in the hands of Paris's mayor.

Municipal services

      The city's telephone services and electricity and gas utilities are run by national concerns. The state operates the fire departments and the police, which are part of the Police Nationale. In addition to dealing with crime, traffic, and public order, the Paris police register vehicles and drivers; issue passports, identity cards, and aliens' residence permits; and conduct political surveillance. One of their main challenges has been the growing wave of crime, particularly terrorism. Special police agencies include detective and counterespionage services and the State Security Police (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité), used for dispersing demonstrations. The Republican Guard (Garde Républicaine), a mounted squadron of spurred, helmeted, plumed, and breast-plated guardsmen armed with sabres, is used for ceremonial occasions such as visits by foreign heads of state.

Health

      The public hospitals and hospital groups in Paris are run jointly by the city and the national health ministry and are financed largely by a social welfare system. Some other hospitals are run by churches and by private organizations, and there are numerous private clinics. Of the city's many medical research bodies, the best known is the Pasteur Institute, founded in 1887.

Education

      As in the rest of France, schools are largely in the hands of the state and are of three main kinds: primary, junior secondary (collèges), and senior secondary (lycées). A significant minority of all pupils are in private, nonstate schools, most of them run by the Roman Catholic Church. Some of the best-known lycées in central Paris are the Lycée Henri-IV, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and the Lycée Janson de Sailly; such schools traditionally have educated a large number of the nation's intelligentsia.

      Paris has long been an important world centre of higher education. The building known as the Sorbonne housed the arts and science faculties of the University of Paris (Paris I–XIII, Universities of), one of Europe's oldest universities, until it was split into 13 autonomous universities following mass student protests in 1968. A number of much smaller bodies of higher education—more specialized and more elitist than the Universities of Paris—include the engineering, technical, and business colleges known as the grand schools (grandes écoles). The two best known in the Paris region are the School of Higher Business Studies (École des Hautes Études Commerciales; HEC) and the Polytechnical School ( École Polytechnique). The Normal Superior School (École Normale Supérieure) serves mainly to prepare future university and lycée teachers. The Institute of Political Sciences (Institut des Sciences Politiques; “Sciences Po”) nurtures many of those who go on to the influential postgraduate National School for Administration (École Nationale d'Administration; ENA) to train as senior civil servants. This selective structure has served France well in many ways but also has come under heavy criticism and undergone sporadic reform.

Cultural life

      Paris has for centuries been regarded as the main cultural powerhouse of the Western world, a magnet for artists and intellectuals and a place where new ideas originate and art reigns supreme. This notion was especially true in the early part of the 20th century, when the city was favoured by numerous expatriate writers and artists, including Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway, Ernest) from the United States, James Joyce (Joyce, James) from Ireland, Pablo Picasso (Picasso, Pablo) from Spain, and Amedeo Modigliani (Modigliani, Amedeo) from Italy.

      While some critics have maintained that Parisian culture has become more a matter of show and dazzle than of true creativity, the city's cultural life is still highly active and distinctive. Parisians love novelty, have an abounding intellectual curiosity, know how to dress up the simplest cultural event with flair and elegance, and are avid patrons of the arts, so the theatres and concert halls, museums, art galleries, and art cinemas are always well attended.

      The principal state-run theatres are the Comédie-Française, the Odéon Theatre, and the National Theatre of Chaillot, which offer a repertoire of French classics, serious modern plays, and foreign imports. Lighter fare is provided by the many privately owned “boulevard” theatres, which struggle to survive. There are more than 150 smaller theatres, many of them state supported, which present a mixed program of experimental “fringe” shows, cabaret, and the like. In addition to many multiscreen commercial cinemas, there are scores of little “art” houses that show a wide variety of movies, many of them with subtitles. France's main film studios are in the suburbs of Paris.

      While the Louvre (Louvre Museum) is the greatest of the classic art museums, newer major museums include the National Museum of Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre, the Orsay Museum of 19th-century art and civilization, and the science museum at La Villette. A specialty of Paris is the staging of large and lavishly mounted exhibitions, usually retrospectives of an individual artist or historical period.

      The city's musical life, once moribund, became much livelier after the early 1970s, in part because the state provided much-needed funding. The city also renewed its commitment to opera by opening a second opera house, at the Place de la Bastille, in 1989. Major annual festivals emphasizing music and drama include the Music Festival (Fête de la Musique), held in June, and the Autumn Festival (Festival d'Automne), held from mid-September through December.

      The main publishing houses and bookshops are located in the Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhoods. The best-known daily newspaper is Le Monde, followed by the daily Le Figaro and Libération. Among the widely read weekly newsmagazines are L'Express and Le Point. All the main French national radio and television networks are centred in Paris; some are owned by the state, and some are privately owned.

John Anthony Charles Ardagh

History

Foundation and medieval growth

      The earliest evidence for human habitation in what is now the city of Paris dates from about 7600 BC. By the end of the 3rd century BC, a settlement had been built on the Île de la Cité; it was inhabited by a Gallic tribe known as the Parisii. The first recorded name for the settlement was Lutetia (Latin: “Midwater-Dwelling”). When the Romans arrived, the Parisii were sufficiently organized and wealthy to have their own gold coinage. Julius Caesar wrote in his Commentaries (52 BC) that the inhabitants burned their town rather than surrender it to the Romans. In the 1st century AD Lutetia grew as a Roman town and spread to the left bank of the Seine. The straight streets and the public buildings in this locale were characteristically Roman, including a forum, several baths, and an amphitheatre.

      A series of barbarian invasions began in the late 2nd century. The town on the left bank was destroyed by the mid-3rd century, and the inhabitants took refuge on the island, around which they built a thick stone wall. From the early 4th century the place became known as Paris.

      By this time, Christianity seems to have spread to Paris. A 10th-century sacramentary cites St. Denis (Latin Dionysius) as having been the first bishop of Paris, about AD 250. A graveyard excavated near the Carrefour des Gobelins shows that there was a Christian community in very early times on the banks of the Bièvre (a left-bank tributary of the Seine); but it was probably under St. Marcel, the ninth bishop (c. 360–436), that the first Christian church, a wooden structure, was built on the island.

      By the end of the 5th century, the Salian Franks, under Clovis, had captured Paris from the Gauls, making it their own capital. It remained the capital until the end of Chilperic's reign in 584, but succeeding Merovingians carried the crown elsewhere. Charlemagne's dynasty, the Carolingians, tended to leave the city in the charge of the counts of Paris, who in many cases had less control over administration than did the bishops. After the election of Hugh Capet, a count of Paris, to the throne in 987, Paris, as a Capetian capital, became more important.

      The population and commerce of Paris increased with the gradual return of political stability and public order under the Capetian kings. The maintenance of order was entrusted to a representative of the king, the provost of Paris (prévôt de Paris), first mentioned in 1050. In the 11th century the first guilds were formed, among them the butchers' guild and the river-merchants' guild, or marchandise de l'eau. In 1141 the crown sold the principal port (near the Hôtel de Ville) to the marchandise, whose ship-blazoned arms eventually were adopted as those of Paris. In 1171 Louis VII gave the marchandise a charter confirming its “ancient right” to a monopoly of river trade.

      During the reign of Philip II (1179–1223), Paris was extensively improved. Streets were paved, the city wall was enlarged, and a number of new towns were enfranchised. In 1190, when Philip II went on a crusade for a year, he entrusted the city's administration not to the provost but to the guild. In 1220 the crown ceded one of its own precious rights to the townsmen—the right to collect duty on incoming goods. The merchants were also made responsible for maintaining fair weights and measures. The King's formal recognition of the University of Paris in 1200 was also a recognition of the natural division of Paris into three parts. On the Right Bank were the mercantile quarters, on the island was the cité, and the Left Bank contained the university and academic quarters. Numerous colleges were also founded, including the Sorbonne (about 1257).

      In the 14th century the development of Paris was hindered not only by the Black Death (1348–49) but also by the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) and by internal disturbances resulting from it. The provost of the merchants in 1356 was Étienne Marcel (Marcel, Étienne), who wanted a Paris as rich and free as the independent cities of the Low Countries. He gave the House of Pillars to the municipal government, and he slew the Dauphin's counselors in the palace throne room and took over the city. Marcel showed great executive skill and equally great political stupidity and allied himself with the revolting peasants (the Jacquerie), with the invading English, and with Charles the Bad, the ambitious king of Navarre. While going to open the city gates to the Navarrese in 1358, Marcel was slain by the citizens.

      In 1382 a tax riot grew into a revolt called the “Maillotin uprising.” The rioters, armed with mauls (maillets), were ruthlessly put down, and the municipal function was suspended for the next 79 years. It was not until 1533, when Francis I ordered the teetering House of Pillars replaced by a new building, that a monarch manifested an encouraging interest in municipal government.

      The dynastic and political vendetta between the Burgundian and the Armagnac faction (1407–35) had continual repercussions in Paris, where the butchers and skinners, led by Simon Caboche, momentarily seized power (1413). The resumption of the Hundred Years' War by the English in 1415 made matters worse. After a revolt of the Parisians (1418), the Burgundians occupied Paris; the Anglo-Burgundian Alliance (1419) was followed by the installation of John Plantagenet, duke of Bedford (Bedford, John Plantagenet, duke of), as regent of France for the English king Henry VI (1422). Whereas Charles VI had lived in his father's Hôtel Saint-Paul, Bedford lived in the Hôtel des Tournelles, on the southeastern edge of the Marais, which was to be the Paris residence of later kings until 1559. During the reign of Charles VI, construction began on the Notre-Dame Bridge (1413).

      In 1429 Joan of Arc failed to capture Paris. Only in 1436 did it fall to the legitimists, who welcomed Charles VII in person in 1437. Successive disturbances had reduced the population, but the Anglo-French truce of 1444 allowed Charles to begin restoring prosperity.

      In 1469, during Louis XI's reign (1461–83), the Sorbonne installed the first printing press in Paris. Otherwise this was a period of intellectual stagnation. Churches were rehabilitated and new houses were built, however; from 1480 splendid private mansions began to appear, such as the Hôtel de Sens and the Hôtel de Cluny.

From the Renaissance to the Revolution

      The influence of the Italian Renaissance (Renaissance) on town architecture appeared in the new building for the accounting office and in the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame Bridge (1500–10) in Louis XII's reign. Under Francis I (1515–47) this influence grew stronger, finding notable expression in the new Hôtel de Ville. Furthermore, whereas from Charles VII's time the kings of France had preferred to reside in Touraine, Francis returned the chief seat of royalty to Paris. With this in mind he had extensive alterations made to the Louvre from 1528 onward. The new splendour of the monarchy, which was well on its way toward absolute rule, was reflected in the way Paris developed as the capital of an increasingly centralized state. The population increased and the town expanded again. Rigorous measures were taken to stamp out Protestantism, which first appeared in Paris during Francis I's reign.

      The Renaissance in Paris culminated with Henry II, who made his solemn entry into the capital in 1549. The new impulse given to building mansions for the nobility and bourgeoisie began to transform Paris from a medieval to a modern city. In 1548 the Brothers of the Passion began performing secular plays at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, in the rue Française, thus inaugurating the first theatre in Paris.

      The transfer of the royal residence from the Hôtel des Tournelles to the Louvre, signaling the development of the neglected western outskirts of Paris, was completed after Henry II's death in 1559. Catherine de Médicis began to build the Tuileries Palace, the gardens of which became a meeting place for elegant society. Classical taste was brilliantly exemplified by the Pont-Neuf, begun in 1577.

      In the mid-16th century the Wars of Religion broke out in France between Roman Catholics and Huguenots, which in Paris brought about the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (1572); the Day of the Barricades (1588), when the Catholic League rose against Henry III; and the long resistance of the Parisians to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, who succeeded as Henry IV in 1589. Henry IV's siege in 1590 was unsuccessful, and only after his conversion to Catholicism did Paris submit to him (1594).

      In Louis XIII's reign (1610–43) Paris expanded farther. On the Left Bank, outside the wall, the queen mother, Marie de Médicis, built the Luxembourg Palace, with its spacious gardens; along the Right Bank, west of the Tuileries, she laid out the Cours-la-Reine as a promenade for carriages. While the Marais north of the Place Royale was being reclaimed and developed, two uninhabited islets east of the cité were united to form the Île Saint-Louis. On the western fringe of the town, a quarter with straight streets was laid out north of Richelieu's new palace, the Palais-Cardinal (1624–36; later the Palais-Royal), which also had a magnificent garden; west of this there was more building and a new fortification was erected.

      The war of the Fronde (1648–53) was the major event of the first two decades of Louis XIV's reign. From 1661, when Cardinal Mazarin died and Louis started his personal rule, Paris was dedicated to reflecting the glory of the monarch, even though he was early resolved to establish himself and the seat of his government outside of Paris (he chose Versailles). For the planning of the new splendours of Paris, the greatest part of the credit must go to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the king's superintendent of buildings.

      Work on the Louvre had been resumed in 1624 and was completed by Claude Perrault's magnificent colonnade (1667–74). The Tuileries Palace was altered and sumptuously decorated. Beyond its gardens to the west, outside the walls of Paris, the tree-planted avenues of the Champs-Élysées were laid out (1667); these were complemented, at the opposite end of Paris, by the Cours de Vincennes.

      In 1702 the Marquis d'Argenson (Argenson, René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d') (Marc René de Voyer), who as lieutenant general of police succeeded the provosts of Paris, raised the number of districts from 16 to 20 (15 on the Right Bank, five on the Left). Paris had nearly 600,000 people, and from the Left Bank new suburbs were advancing toward the villages on the surrounding hills.

      During the 18th century a great deal was done to improve and beautify Paris. Louis XV's temporary residence in the Tuileries during his younger days encouraged development nearby, so that the Faubourg Saint-Honoré expanded and became, like the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an aristocratic quarter. The garden of the Palais-Royal became a centre of elegant society. The Grands Boulevards began to be bordered with houses, including some fine mansions, and the eastern stretch became a fashionable promenade with little theatres and cafés. Villas built by nobles and financiers were scattered around this outlying sector. On the Left Bank the southern course of boulevards was laid out and the routes were lined with trees and houses. Some of the houses that had been built earlier on the bridges were razed in 1786–88; others remained until 1808. Water was supplied to both banks by two fire pumps, developed by Jacques-Constantin Périer and his father, Auguste-Charles. The wall of the farmers-general, built in the 1780s to facilitate the levying of duties on imports, represented the extension and the unity of Paris.

Evolution of the modern city

The Revolution and Napoleon I

      The French Revolution of 1789 destroyed those vestiges of the seigneurial systems that had remained in Paris and consolidated the status of Paris as the capital of a centralized France. The major events of the Revolution took place in Paris, including the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789); the conveying of the King and the National Constituent Assembly from Versailles to Paris (October 1789); the establishment of the numerous clubs in the convents of the old religious orders, Jacobins, Cordeliers, and Feuillants; the insurrection that heralded the abolition of the monarchy (Aug. 10, 1792); the execution of the King (Jan. 21, 1793) in the Place de la Révolution, not yet named Place de la Concorde; the most prolonged manifestation of the Terror (1793–94); and the series of coups d'état, from that of 9 Thermidor, year II (1794), to that of 18 Brumaire, year VIII (1799), which preceded the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte.

      Under the Thermidorians and the Directory the boulevard des Italiens became a resort of the fashionable and the frivolous, whereas the populace favoured the boulevard du Temple. After the inauguration of the First Empire, Napoleon (Napoleon I) in 1806 ordered the triumphal arches of the Carrousel and of the Étoile to be erected. While the Neoclassical style recalled imperial Rome, great works of public utility served to modernize Paris: the Bourse; new quays and bridges (the Arts, Jena, Austerlitz, and Saint-Louis bridges); the Ourcq and Saint-Martin canals; numerous fountains (such as the Palmier Fountain, on the site of the Châtelet); as well as slaughterhouses, marketplaces, the wine market, and the warehouses of Bercy.

      Industrialization, in progress in the Napoleonic period, advanced rapidly under the Restoration (1814–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48). Gas lighting was introduced; omnibus services began in 1828; and Paris got its first railway, which ran to Le Pecq, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1837. New districts grew up on the outskirts of Paris. Although the wall of the farmers-general remained the administrative boundary of Paris until 1859, it was decided in 1840 to refortify the capital with a longer military wall.

Napoleon III and Haussmann (Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron)

      Even by the mid-19th century, some areas of Paris had not been improved substantially for hundreds of years. Access from one centre to another and to the railway stations (which had become in effect the gateways of Paris) was difficult; moreover, overpopulation and rapid industrialization had brought squalor and misery, which account in part for the dominant role of Paris in the revolutions of both 1830 and 1848. Napoleon III, emperor from 1852 to 1870, enjoined his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann, to remedy these problems.

      Haussmann was the creator of modern Paris. A planner on the grand scale, he advocated straight arterial thoroughfares, symmetry, and advantageous vistas. He slashed the boulevards through the tangles of slums, began the modern sewer and water systems, gutted the Île de la Cité, rebuilt the ancient market of the Halles, and added four new Seine bridges and rebuilt three old ones. The brilliance and prosperity of Paris under Napoleon III were exemplified in the exhibitions held there in 1855 and 1867.

The Third Republic and after

      The Franco-German War (1870–71), which brought the fall of the Second Empire and the siege of Paris, was followed by the Commune (1871). Under the Third Republic, Haussmann's projects were continued. Further international exhibitions (1878, 1889, 1900, and 1937) were the occasions for the building of monuments such as the Trocadéro (1878), the Eiffel Tower (1889), and the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, with the Alexandre III Bridge (1900), and for the reconstruction of the Trocadéro as the Chaillot Palace (1937). The Métro was constructed, commerce and industry annexed formerly residential districts, and the ever-expanding population overflowed the old limits of Paris. Louis-Philippe's fortifications were abolished by a law of April 1919.

      During the German occupation of Paris in World War II, the city was only slightly damaged. It was a centre for the activities of the Resistance movement, which culminated in the liberation of the city in August 1944.

      The immediate postwar years were a time of eager intellectual activity but also of poverty and social tension. The housing shortage was grave, the psychological scars of the German occupation were slow to heal, and colonial wars and political instability lowered morale. Conditions gradually improved, especially after Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958. The city's economy improved, old buildings and neighbourhoods were cleaned up and renovated, and housing and commercial space were built.

      In May 1968 Paris was rocked by a great student uprising, which swelled from scattered unrest among students in the Latin Quarter to a nationwide outbreak of labour strikes and protests. Attention was focused on Paris' economic and social problems, and the uprising was later seen as useful in hastening the modernization of French society.

Blake Ehrlich John Anthony Charles Ardagh

      During the last decades of the 20th century, several new developments bolstered the cultural and economic position of Paris. These included the architecturally innovative Pompidou Centre (or Beaubourg) and the Orsay Museum. Commercial projects included the office complexes at Bercy, at La Villette, and at La Défense, a high-rise business district on the periphery of the city. The latter's Grande Arche de la Défense, a monumental rectangular arch completed in 1989, echoes the Arc de Triomphe to its east. This arch was one of the architectural grands projets (“great projects”) promoted by President Franƈois Mitterrand to symbolize French cultural and economic leadership. Other such projects included the glass pyramid at the Louvre and the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France), which was completed in 1995.

      During the late 20th century, Paris attracted thousands of migrants from Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean region, and other parts of Europe. While their presence aroused social and political tensions, they contributed to the city's economy and cultural diversity. The increasingly cosmopolitan character of Paris reinforced its place as one of the great metropolises of the world.

Ed.

Additional Reading

General description

Paul Cohen-Portheim, The Spirit of Paris (1937; originally published in German, 1930); John Russell, Paris (1983); Harold P. Clunn, The Face of Paris (1933, reprinted 1958); B. Ehrlich, Paris on the Seine (1962); and Anthony Glyn, The Companion Guide to Paris (1985). Guidebooks include Paris, 3rd ed. (1996), from the Michelin Tourist Guides series; and Ian Littlewood, Paris: A Literary Companion (1987), for literary landmarks. The monumental work of F. De Rochegude and Maurice Dumolin, Guide pratique à travers le vieux Paris, new rev. ed. (1923), has been adapted by Jean-Paul Clébert, Les Rues de Paris: promenades du marquis de Rochegude à travers tous les arrondissements de Paris parcourus de nouveau, 2 vol. (1958, reissued 1966). These may be supplemented by Georges Pillement, Paris inconnu, rev. ed. (1981). Jean Bastié, Géographie du Grand Paris (1984), describes the geography of Greater Paris; François Chaslin, Les Paris de François Mitterrand: histoire des grands projets architecturaux (1985), describes architectural projects under President Mitterrand; and Pierre Merlin, Les Transports à Paris et Ile-de-France (1982), discusses transportation in Paris and the Île-de-France region. William Mahder (ed.), Paris Arts on Seine (1985), offers a lively view of cultural trends. John Ardagh, France Today, new rev. ed. (1987), has diverse materials on life in Paris. For information on churches, see Amédée C.L. Boinet, Les Églises parisiennes, 3 vol. (1958–64). Of sentimental interest are Léon-Paul Fargue et al., Dans les rues de Paris au temps des fiacres (1950); and R. Héron De Villefosse, Histoire et géographie galantes de Paris (1957).

History

General histories include Henry Bidou, Paris (1939; originally published in French, 1937); and Robert Laffont (ed.), The Illustrated History of Paris and the Parisians (1958; originally published in French, 1958; also published as Paris and Its People). Other major works include Marcel Poëte, Une Vie de cité: Paris de sa naissance à nos jours, 3 vol. and album (1924–31); Lucien Dubech and Pierre D'Espezel, Histoire de Paris, 2 vol. (1931); and Philippe Lefrançois, Paris à travers les siècles, 10 vol. (1948–56). For the history of the city's growth, see particularly R. Héron De Villefosse, Construction de Paris (1938). Studies of special periods include Paul M. Duval, Paris antique: des origines au troisième siècle (1961); and Bernard Champigneulle, Paris de Napoléon à nos jours (1969). Among analytical works are Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century (1987; originally published in French, 1981); David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (1986); Lenard R. Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914 (1984); Ann-Louise Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902 (1985); and Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (1986). Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War (1982), details the intellectual life in Paris during the 20th century. Norma Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978 (1979), presents the city's evolution from a planner's point of view.Blake Ehrlich John Anthony Charles Ardagh

▪ Greek mythology

Greek“Defender” also called  Alexandros 

 in Greek legend, son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba. A dream regarding his birth was interpreted as an evil portent, and he was consequently expelled from his family as an infant. Left for dead, he was either nursed by a bear or found by shepherds. He was raised as a shepherd, unknown to his parents. As a young man he entered a boxing contest at a Trojan festival, in which he defeated Priam's other sons. After his identity was revealed, he was received home again by Priam.

 The “judgment of Paris” was and continues to be a popular theme in art. According to legend, Paris, while he was still a shepherd, was chosen by Zeus to determine which of three goddesses was the most beautiful. Rejecting bribes of kingly power from Hera and military might from Athena, he chose Aphrodite and accepted her bribe to help him win the most beautiful woman alive. His seduction of Helen (the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta) and refusal to return her was the cause of the Trojan War. During the war Paris seems to have had a secondary role: a good warrior but inferior to his brother Hector and to the Greek leaders whom he faced. Menelaus would have defeated Paris in single combat, but Aphrodite rescued him, and the war continued.

      Near the end of the war, Paris shot the arrow that, by Apollo's help, caused the death of the hero Achilles. Paris himself, soon after, received a fatal wound from an arrow shot by the rival archer Philoctetes.

▪ Kentucky, United States

      city, seat of Bourbon county, north-central Kentucky, U.S. It lies on the South Fork Licking River, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Lexington, in the Bluegrass region. First settled about 1775, it was founded as Hopewell (1789) and may have been called Bourbontown before it was renamed Paris (1790) in appreciation of French aid during the American Revolution. Bourbon whiskey was first distilled there in 1790; it is no longer made in the county. Duncan Tavern Historic Shrine (1788), once the rendezvous of frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone (Boone, Daniel), has been restored. A few miles east is Old Cane Ridge Meeting House (1791), where in 1804 Barton W. Stone (Stone, Barton W) started a movement called the New Lights, which merged in 1832 with the “Campbellites” to become the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Disciples of Christ). Garrett Augustus Morgan, an African American inventor born in Paris, received the first U.S. patent for a traffic signal; his other contributions include a gas mask and a zigzag attachment for sewing machines.

      The basic farm economy (livestock, Thoroughbred horses, and tobacco) is supplemented by the manufacture of textiles, chemicals, and mining machinery. Inc. city, 1862. Pop. (1990) 8,730; (2000) 9,183.

▪ Texas, United States

      city, seat (1844) of Lamar county, northeastern Texas, U.S., on a ridge between the Red and Sulphur rivers, some 105 miles (170 km) northeast of Dallas. Laid out in 1845 and named for Paris, France, it developed after the arrival of the railroad in 1876. The city was replanned after a disastrous fire in 1916. The city was also rebuilt after a tornado destroyed more than 1,500 homes and buildings in April 1982. A shipping point for cotton, grain, and livestock of the Blacklands Belt, it also has some light manufacturing. Paris also serves as a regional medical centre for northwest Texas and southeast Oklahoma. Paris Junior College was established in 1924. The Sam Bell Maxey House, built in 1868, is preserved as a state historic site. The city also boasts a 65-foot (20-metre) replica of the Eiffel Tower topped by a cowboy hat. Gambill Wildlife Refuge on Lake Gibbons is nearby. Inc. town, 1845; city, 1905. Pop. (1990) 24,699; (2000) 25,898.

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