Etymology

The ancient oppidum that corresponds to the modern city of Paris was first mentioned in the mid-1st century BC by Julius Caesar as Luteciam Parisiorum ('Lutetia of the Parisii'), and is later attested as Parision in the 5th century AD, then as Paris in 1265. During the Roman period, it was commonly known as Lutetia or Lutecia in Latin, and as Leukotekía in Greek, which is interpreted as either stemming from the Celtic root *lukot- ('mouse'), or from *luto- ('marsh, swamp'), depending on whether the Latin or Greek form is the closest to the original Celtic name.

The name Paris is derived from its early inhabitants, the Parisii, a Gallic tribe from the Iron Age and the Roman period. The meaning of the Gaulish ethnonym remains debated. According to Xavier Delamarre, it may derive from the Celtic root pario- ('cauldron'). Alfred Holder interpreted the name as 'the makers' or 'the commanders', by comparing it to the Welsh peryff ('lord, commander'), both possibly descending from a Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as *kwar-is-io-. Alternatively, Pierre-Yves Lambert proposed to translate Parisii as the 'spear people', by connecting the first element to the Old Irish carr ('spear'), derived from an earlier *kwar-sā. In any case, the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology.

Paris is often referred to as the 'City of Light' (La Ville Lumière), both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more literally because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments. Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carrousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam(e) (panam) in French slang.

Inhabitants are known in English as "Parisians" and in French as Parisiens (paʁizjɛ̃). They are also pejoratively called Parigots (paʁiɡo).

History

Origins

The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; this meeting place of land and water trade routes gradually became an important trading centre. The Parisii traded with many river towns (some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula) and minted their own coins for that purpose.

The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank. The Roman town was originally called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii", modern French Lutèce). It became a prosperous city with a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would later become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin "Hill of Martyrs"), later "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île de la Cité failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris (885–86), for which the then Count of Paris (comte de Paris), Odo of France, was elected king of West Francia. From the Capetian dynasty that began with the 987 election of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks (duc des Francs), as king of a unified Francia, Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France.

High and Late Middle Ages to Louis XIV

By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France. The Palais de la Cité, the royal residence, was located at the western end of the Île de la Cité. In 1163, during the reign of Louis VII, Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, undertook the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral at its eastern extremity.

After the marshland between the river Seine and its slower 'dead arm' to its north was filled in around the 10th century, Paris' cultural centre began to move to the Right Bank. In 1137, a new city marketplace (today's Les Halles) replaced the two smaller ones on the Île de la Cité and Place de la Grève (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). The latter location housed the headquarters of Paris' river trade corporation, an organisation that later became, unofficially (although formally in later years), Paris' first municipal government.

In the late 12th century, Philip Augustus extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions from the west, gave the city its first walls between 1190 and 1215, rebuilt its bridges to either side of its central island, and paved its main thoroughfares. In 1190, he transformed Paris' former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that would become the University of Paris and would draw students from all of Europe.

With 200,000 inhabitants in 1328, Paris, then already the capital of France, was the most populous city of Europe. By comparison, London in 1300 had 80,000 inhabitants.

During the Hundred Years' War, Paris was occupied by England-friendly Burgundian forces from 1418, before being occupied outright by the English when Henry V of England entered the French capital in 1420; in spite of a 1429 effort by Joan of Arc to liberate the city, it would remain under English occupation until 1436.

In the late 16th-century French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic League, the organisers of 24 August 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which thousands of French Protestants were killed. The conflicts ended when pretender to the throne Henry IV, after converting to Catholicism to gain entry to the capital, entered the city in 1594 to claim the crown of France. This king made several improvements to the capital during his reign: he completed the construction of Paris' first uncovered, sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, built a Louvre extension connecting it to the Tuileries Palace, and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. In spite of Henry IV's efforts to improve city circulation, the narrowness of Paris' streets was a contributing factor in his assassination near Les Halles marketplace in 1610.

During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe. He built five new bridges, a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne, and a palace for himself, the Palais-Cardinal, which he bequeathed to Louis XIII. After Richelieu's death in 1642, it was renamed the Palais-Royal.

Due to the Parisian uprisings during the Fronde civil war, Louis XIV moved his court to a new palace, Versailles, in 1682. Although no longer the capital of France, arts and sciences in the city flourished with the Comédie-Française, the Academy of Painting, and the French Academy of Sciences. To demonstrate that the city was safe from attack, the king had the city walls demolished and replaced with tree-lined boulevards that would become the Grands Boulevards of today. Other marks of his reign were the Collège des Quatre-Nations, the Place Vendôme, the Place des Victoires, and Les Invalides.

18th and 19th centuries

Paris grew in population from about 400,000 in 1640 to 650,000 in 1780. A new boulevard, the Champs-Élysées, extended the city west to Étoile, while the working-class neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the eastern site of the city grew more and more crowded with poor migrant workers from other regions of France.

Paris was the centre of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity known as the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot and d'Alembert published their Encyclopédie in 1751, and the Montgolfier Brothers launched the first manned flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783, from the gardens of the Château de la Muette. Paris was the financial capital of continental Europe, the primary European centre of book publishing and fashion and the manufacture of fine furniture and luxury goods.

In the summer of 1789, Paris became the centre stage for the French Revolution. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal authority. The first independent Paris Commune, or city council, met in the Hôtel de Ville and, on 15 July, elected a Mayor, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly.

Louis XVI and the royal family were brought to Paris and made prisoners within the Tuileries Palace. In 1793, as the revolution turned more and more radical, the king, queen, and the mayor were guillotined (executed) in the Reign of Terror, along with more than 16,000 others throughout France. The property of the aristocracy and the church was nationalised, and the city's churches were closed, sold or demolished. A succession of revolutionary factions ruled Paris until 9 November 1799 (coup d'état du 18 brumaire), when Napoléon Bonaparte seized power as First Consul.

The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but between 1799 and 1815, it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000. Napoleon Bonaparte replaced the elected government of Paris with a prefect reporting only to him. He began erecting monuments to military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe, and improved the neglected infrastructure of the city with new fountains, the Canal de l'Ourcq, Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city's first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts.

During the Restoration, the bridges and squares of Paris were returned to their pre-Revolution names; the July Revolution in 1830 (commemorated by the July Column on the Place de la Bastille) brought a constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe I, to power. The first railway line to Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city. Louis-Philippe was overthrown by a popular uprising in the streets of Paris in 1848. His successor, Napoleon III, alongside the newly appointed prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, launched a gigantic public works project to build wide new boulevards, a new opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. In 1860, Napoleon III also annexed the surrounding towns and created eight new arrondissements, expanding Paris to its current limits.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Paris was besieged by the Prussian Army. After months of blockade, hunger, and then bombardment by the Prussians, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. On 28 March, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune seized power in Paris. The Commune held power for two months, until it was harshly suppressed by the French army during the "Bloody Week" at the end of May 1871.

Late in the 19th century, Paris hosted two major international expositions: the 1889 Universal Exposition, was held to mark the centennial of the French Revolution and featured the new Eiffel Tower; and the 1900 Universal Exposition, which gave Paris the Pont Alexandre III, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the first Paris Métro line. Paris became the laboratory of Naturalism (Émile Zola) and Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine), and of Impressionism in art (Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir).

20th and 21st centuries

By 1901, the population of Paris had grown to about 2,715,000. At the beginning of the century, artists from around the world including Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, and Henri Matisse made Paris their home. It was the birthplace of Fauvism, Cubism and abstract art, and authors such as Marcel Proust were exploring new approaches to literature.

During the First World War, Paris sometimes found itself on the front line; 600 to 1,000 Paris taxis played a small but highly important symbolic role in transporting 6,000 soldiers to the front line at the First Battle of the Marne. The city was also bombed by Zeppelins and shelled by German long-range guns. In the years after the war, known as Les Années Folles, Paris continued to be a mecca for writers, musicians and artists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Josephine Baker, Eva Kotchever, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Sidney Bechet Allen Ginsberg and the surrealist Salvador Dalí.

In the years after the peace conference, the city was also home to growing numbers of students and activists from French colonies and other Asian and African countries, who later became leaders of their countries, such as Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

On 14 June 1940, the German army marched into Paris, which had been declared an "open city". On 16–17 July 1942, following German orders, the French police and gendarmes arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,115 children, and confined them during five days at the Vel d'Hiv (Vélodrome d'Hiver), from which they were transported by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. None of the children came back. On 25 August 1944, the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army. General Charles de Gaulle led a huge and emotional crowd down the Champs Élysées towards Notre Dame de Paris, and made a rousing speech from the Hôtel de Ville.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, Paris became one front of the Algerian War for independence; in August 1961, the pro-independence FLN targeted and killed 11 Paris policemen, leading to the imposition of a curfew on Muslims of Algeria (who, at that time, were French citizens). On 17 October 1961, an unauthorised but peaceful protest demonstration of Algerians against the curfew led to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, in which at least 40 people were killed, including some thrown into the Seine. The anti-independence Organisation armée secrète (OAS), for their part, carried out a series of bombings in Paris throughout 1961 and 1962.

In May 1968, protesting students occupied the Sorbonne and put up barricades in the Latin Quarter. Thousands of Parisian blue-collar workers joined the students, and the movement grew into a two-week general strike. Supporters of the government won the June elections by a large majority. The May 1968 events in France resulted in the break-up of the University of Paris into 13 independent campuses. In 1975, the National Assembly changed the status of Paris to that of other French cities and, on 25 March 1977, Jacques Chirac became the first elected mayor of Paris since 1793. The Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city at 57 storeys and high, was built between 1969 and 1973. It was highly controversial, and it remains the only building in the centre of the city over 32 storeys high. The population of Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs. A suburban railway network, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), was built to complement the Métro; the Périphérique expressway encircling the city, was completed in 1973.

Most of the postwar's Presidents of the Fifth Republic wanted to leave their own monuments in Paris; President Georges Pompidou started the Centre Georges Pompidou (1977), Valéry Giscard d'Estaing began the Musée d'Orsay (1986); President François Mitterrand, in power for 14 years, built the Opéra Bastille (1985–1989), the new site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1996), the Arche de la Défense (1985–1989), and the Louvre Pyramid with its underground courtyard (1983–1989); Jacques Chirac (2006), the Musée du quai Branly.

In the early 21st century, the population of Paris began to increase slowly again, as more young people moved into the city. It reached 2.25 million in 2011. In March 2001, Bertrand Delanoë became the first Socialist Mayor of Paris. In 2007, in an effort to reduce car traffic in the city, he introduced the Vélib', a system which rents bicycles for the use of local residents and visitors. Bertrand Delanoë also transformed a section of the highway along the Left Bank of the Seine into an urban promenade and park, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine, which he inaugurated in June 2013.

In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Grand Paris project, to integrate Paris more closely with the towns in the region around it. After many modifications, the new area, named the Metropolis of Grand Paris, with a population of 6.7 million, was created on 1 January 2016. In 2011, the City of Paris and the national government approved the plans for the Grand Paris Express, totalling of automated metro lines to connect Paris, the innermost three departments around Paris, airports and high-speed rail (TGV) stations, at an estimated cost of €35 billion. The system is scheduled to be completed by 2030.

Terrorist attacks

Between July and October 1995, a series of bombings carried out by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria caused 8 deaths and more than 200 injuries.

On 7 January 2015, two French Muslim extremists attacked the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and killed thirteen people, in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and on 9 January, a third terrorist, who claimed he was part of ISIL, killed four hostages during an attack at a Jewish grocery store at Porte de Vincennes. On 11 January an estimated 1.5 million people marched in Paris in a show of solidarity against terrorism and in support of freedom of speech. On 13 November of the same year, a series of coordinated bomb and gunfire terrorist attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, claimed by ISIL, killed 130 people and injured more than 350.

On 3 February 2017, a two-backpack-carrying, machete-wielding attacker shouting "Allahu Akbar" attacked soldiers guarding the Louvre museum after they stopped him because of his bags; the assailant was shot, and no explosives were found. On 18 March of the same year, in a Vitry-sur-Seine bar, a man held patrons hostage, then fled to later hold a gun to the head of an Orly Airport French soldier, shouting "I am here to die in the name of Allah", and was shot dead by the soldier's comrades. On 20 April, a man fatally shot a French police officer on the Champs-Élysées, and was later shot dead himself. On 19 June, a man rammed his weapons-and-explosives-laden vehicle into a police van on the Champs-Élysées, but the car only burst into flames.

Geography

Location

Paris is located in northern central France, in a north-bending arc of the river Seine whose crest includes two islands, the Île Saint-Louis and the larger Île de la Cité, which form the oldest part of the city. The river's mouth on the English Channel (La Manche) is about downstream from the city. The city is spread widely on both banks of the river. Overall, the city is relatively flat, and the lowest point is above sea level. Paris has several prominent hills, the highest of which is Montmartre at .

Excluding the outlying parks of Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, Paris covers an oval measuring about in area, enclosed by the ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique. The city's last major annexation of outlying territories in 1860 not only gave it its modern form but also created the 20 clockwise-spiralling arrondissements (municipal boroughs). From the 1860 area of , the city limits were expanded marginally to in the 1920s. In 1929, the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes forest parks were officially annexed to the city, bringing its area to about . The metropolitan area of the city is .

Measured from the 'point zero' in front of its Notre-Dame cathedral, Paris by road is southeast of London, south of Calais, southwest of Brussels, north of Marseille, northeast of Nantes, and southeast of Rouen.

Climate

Paris has a typical Western European oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb), which is affected by the North Atlantic Current. The overall climate throughout the year is mild and moderately wet. Summer days are usually warm and pleasant with average temperatures between , and a fair amount of sunshine. Each year, however, there are a few days when the temperature rises above . Longer periods of more intense heat sometimes occur, such as the heat wave of 2003 when temperatures exceeded for weeks, reached on some days and rarely cooled down at night. Spring and autumn have, on average, mild days and fresh nights but are changing and unstable. Surprisingly warm or cool weather occurs frequently in both seasons. In winter, sunshine is scarce; days are cool, and nights are cold but generally above freezing with low temperatures around . Light night frosts are however quite common, but the temperature seldom dips below . Snow falls every year, but rarely stays on the ground. The city sometimes sees light snow or flurries with or without accumulation.

Paris has an average annual precipitation of , and experiences light rainfall distributed evenly throughout the year. However, the city is known for intermittent, abrupt, heavy showers. The highest recorded temperature was on 25 July 2019, and the lowest was on 10 December 1879.

Administration

City government

For almost all of its long history, except for a few brief periods, Paris was governed directly by representatives of the king, emperor, or president of France. The city was not granted municipal autonomy by the National Assembly until 1974. The first modern elected mayor of Paris was Jacques Chirac, elected 20 March 1977, becoming the city's first mayor since 1793. The mayor is Anne Hidalgo, a socialist, first elected 5 April 2014 and re-elected 28 June 2020.

The mayor of Paris is elected indirectly by Paris voters; the voters of each of the city's 20 arrondissements elect members to the Conseil de Paris (Council of Paris), which subsequently elects the mayor. The council is composed of 163 members, with each arrondissement allocated a number of seats dependent upon its population, from 10 members for each of the least-populated arrondissements (1st through 9th) to 34 members for the most populated (the 15th). The council is elected using closed list proportional representation in a two-round system. Party lists winning an absolute majority in the first round – or at least a plurality in the second round – automatically win half the seats of an arrondissement. The remaining half of seats are distributed proportionally to all lists which win at least 5% of the vote using the highest averages method. This ensures that the winning party or coalition always wins a majority of the seats, even if they don't win an absolute majority of the vote.

Once elected, the council plays a largely passive role in the city government, primarily because it meets only once a month. The council is divided between a coalition of the left of 91 members, including the socialists, communists, greens, and extreme left; and 71 members for the centre-right, plus a few members from smaller parties.

Each of Paris' 20 arrondissements has its own town hall and a directly elected council (conseil d'arrondissement), which, in turn, elects an arrondissement mayor. The council of each arrondissement is composed of members of the Conseil de Paris and also members who serve only on the council of the arrondissement. The number of deputy mayors in each arrondissement varies depending upon its population. There are a total of 20 arrondissement mayors and 120 deputy mayors.

The budget of the city for 2018 is 9.5 billion Euros, with an expected deficit of 5.5 billion Euros. 7.9 billion Euros are designated for city administration, and 1.7 billion Euros for investment. The number of city employees increased from 40,000 in 2001 to 55,000 in 2018. The largest part of the investment budget is earmarked for public housing (262 million Euros) and for real estate (142 million Euros).

Métropole du Grand Paris

The Métropole du Grand Paris, or simply Grand Paris, formally came into existence on 1 January 2016. It is an administrative structure for co-operation between the City of Paris and its nearest suburbs. It includes the City of Paris, plus the communes of the three departments of the inner suburbs (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne), plus seven communes in the outer suburbs, including Argenteuil in Val d'Oise and Paray-Vieille-Poste in Essonne, which were added to include the major airports of Paris. The Metropole covers and has a population of 6.945 million persons.

The new structure is administered by a Metropolitan Council of 210 members, not directly elected, but chosen by the councils of the member Communes. By 2020 its basic competencies will include urban planning, housing and protection of the environment. The first president of the metropolitan council, Patrick Ollier, a Republican and the mayor of the town of Rueil-Malmaison, was elected on 22 January 2016. Though the Metropole has a population of nearly seven million people and accounts for 25 percent of the GDP of France, it has a very small budget: just 65 million Euros, compared with eight billion Euros for the City of Paris.

Regional government

The Region of Île de France, including Paris and its surrounding communities, is governed by the Regional Council, which has its headquarters in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. It is composed of 209 members representing the different communes within the region. On 15 December 2015, a list of candidates of the Union of the Right, a coalition of centrist and right-wing parties, led by Valérie Pécresse, narrowly won the regional election, defeating a coalition of Socialists and ecologists. The Socialists had governed the region for seventeen years. The regional council has 121 members from the Union of the Right, 66 from the Union of the Left and 22 from the extreme right National Front.

National government

As the capital of France, Paris is the seat of France's national government. For the executive, the two chief officers each have their own official residences, which also serve as their offices. The President of the French Republic resides at the Élysée Palace in the 8th arrondissement, while the Prime Minister's seat is at the Hôtel Matignon in the 7th arrondissement. Government ministries are located in various parts of the city; many are located in the 7th arrondissement, near the Hôtel Matignon.

Both houses of the French Parliament are located on the Rive Gauche. The upper house, the Senate, meets in the Palais du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement, while the more important lower house, the National Assembly, meets in the Palais Bourbon in the 7th arrondissement. The President of the Senate, the second-highest public official in France (the President of the Republic being the sole superior), resides in the Petit Luxembourg, a smaller palace annexe to the Palais du Luxembourg.

France's highest courts are located in Paris. The Court of Cassation, the highest court in the judicial order, which reviews criminal and civil cases, is located in the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité, while the Conseil d'État, which provides legal advice to the executive and acts as the highest court in the administrative order, judging litigation against public bodies, is located in the Palais-Royal in the 1st arrondissement. The Constitutional Council, an advisory body with ultimate authority on the constitutionality of laws and government decrees, also meets in the Montpensier wing of the Palais Royal.

Paris and its region host the headquarters of several international organisations including UNESCO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Paris Club, the European Space Agency, the International Energy Agency, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the European Union Institute for Security Studies, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Exhibition Bureau, and the International Federation for Human Rights.

Following the motto "Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris"; the only sister city of Paris is Rome, although Paris has partnership agreements with many other cities around the world.

Police force

The security of Paris is mainly the responsibility of the Prefecture of Police of Paris, a subdivision of the Ministry of the Interior. It supervises the units of the National Police who patrol the city and the three neighbouring departments. It is also responsible for providing emergency services, including the Paris Fire Brigade. Its headquarters is on Place Louis Lépine on the Île de la Cité.

There are 30,200 officers under the prefecture, and a fleet of more than 6,000 vehicles, including police cars, motorcycles, fire trucks, boats and helicopters. The national police has its own special unit for riot control and crowd control and security of public buildings, called the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), a unit formed in 1944 right after the liberation of France. Vans of CRS agents are frequently seen in the centre of the city when there are demonstrations and public events.

The police are supported by the National Gendarmerie, a branch of the French Armed Forces, though their police operations now are supervised by the Ministry of the Interior. The traditional kepis of the gendarmes were replaced in 2002 with caps, and the force modernised, though they still wear kepis for ceremonial occasions.

Crime in Paris is similar to that in most large cities. Violent crime is relatively rare in the city centre. Political violence is uncommon, though very large demonstrations may occur in Paris and other French cities simultaneously. These demonstrations, usually managed by a strong police presence, can turn confrontational and escalate into violence.

Cityscape

Urbanism and architecture

Most French rulers since the Middle Ages made a point of leaving their mark on a city that, contrary to many other of the world's capitals, has never been destroyed by catastrophe or war. In modernising its infrastructure through the centuries, Paris has preserved even its earliest history in its street map. At its origin, before the Middle Ages, the city was composed of several islands and sandbanks in a bend of the Seine; of those, two remain today: Île Saint-Louis and the Île de la Cité. A third one is the 1827 artificially created Île aux Cygnes.

Modern Paris owes much of its downtown plan and architectural harmony to Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. Between 1853 and 1870 they rebuilt the city centre, created the wide downtown boulevards and squares where the boulevards intersected, imposed standard facades along the boulevards, and required that the facades be built of the distinctive cream-grey "Paris stone". They also built the major parks around the city centre. The high residential population of its city centre also makes it much different from most other western major cities.

Paris' urbanism laws have been under strict control since the early 17th century, particularly where street-front alignment, building height and building distribution is concerned. In recent developments, a 1974–2010 building height limitation of was raised to in central areas and in some of Paris' peripheral quarters, yet for some of the city's more central quarters, even older building-height laws still remain in effect. The Tour Montparnasse was both Paris's and France's tallest building since 1973, but this record has been held by the La Défense quarter Tour First tower in Courbevoie since its 2011 construction.

Parisian examples of historical architectural styles date back more than a millennium, including the Romanesque church of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1014–1163), the early Gothic Architecture of the Basilica of Saint-Denis (1144), the Notre Dame Cathedral (1163–1345), the Flamboyant Gothic of Saint Chapelle (1239–1248), the Baroque churches of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis (1627–1641) and Les Invalides (1670–1708). The 19th century produced the neoclassical church of La Madeleine (1808–1842), the Palais Garnier serving as an opera house (1875), the neo-Byzantine Basilica of Sacré-Cœur (1875–1919), as well as the exuberant Belle Époque modernism of the Eiffel Tower (1889). Striking examples of 20th-century architecture include the Centre Georges Pompidou by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano (1977), the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie by various architects (1986), the Arab World Institute by Jean Nouvel (1987), the Louvre Pyramid by I. M. Pei (1989) and the Opéra Bastille by Carlos Ott (1989). Contemporary architecture includes the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac by Jean Nouvel (2006), the contemporary art museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation by Frank Gehry (2014) and the new Tribunal de grande instance de Paris by Renzo Piano (2018).

Housing

The most expensive residential streets in Paris in 2018 by average price per square metre were Avenue Montaigne (8th arrondissement), at 22,372 euros per square metre; Place Dauphine (1st arrondissement; 20,373 euros) and the Rue de Furstemberg (6th arrondissement) at 18,839 euros per square metre. The total number of residences in the City of Paris in 2011 was , up from a former high of in 2006. Among these, (85.9 percent) were main residences, (6.8 percent) were secondary residences, and the remaining 7.3 percent were empty (down from 9.2 percent in 2006).

Sixty-two percent of its buildings date from 1949 and before, 20 percent were built between 1949 and 1974, and only 18 percent of the buildings remaining were built after that date. Two-thirds of the city's 1.3 million residences are studio and two-room apartments. Paris averages 1.9 people per residence, a number that has remained constant since the 1980s, but it is much less than Île-de-France's 2.33 person-per-residence average. Only 33 percent of principal residence Parisians own their habitation (against 47 percent for the entire Île-de-France): the major part of the city's population is a rent-paying one. Social or public housing represented 19.9 percent of the city's total residences in 2017. Its distribution varies widely throughout the city, from 2.6 percent of the housing in the wealthy 7th arrondissement, to 24 percent in the 20th arrondissement, 26 percent in the 14th arrondissement and 39.9 percent in the 19th arrondissement, on the poorer southwest and northern edges of the city.

On the night of 8–9 February 2019, during a period of cold weather, a Paris NGO conducted its annual citywide count of homeless persons. They counted 3,641 homeless persons in Paris, of whom twelve percent were women. More than half had been homeless for more than a year. 2,885 were living in the streets or parks, 298 in train and metro stations, and 756 in other forms of temporary shelter. This was an increase of 588 persons since 2018.

Paris and its suburbs

Aside from the 20th-century addition of the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes and the Paris heliport, Paris's administrative limits have remained unchanged since 1860. A greater administrative Seine department had been governing Paris and its suburbs since its creation in 1790, but the rising suburban population had made it difficult to maintain as a unique entity. To address this problem, the parent "District de la région parisienne" ('district of the Paris region') was reorganised into several new departments from 1968: Paris became a department in itself, and the administration of its suburbs was divided between the three new departments surrounding it. The district of the Paris region was renamed "Île-de-France" in 1977, but this abbreviated "Paris region" name is still commonly used today to describe the Île-de-France, and as a vague reference to the entire Paris agglomeration. Long-intended measures to unite Paris with its suburbs began on 1 January 2016, when the Métropole du Grand Paris came into existence.

Paris' disconnect with its suburbs, its lack of suburban transportation, in particular, became all too apparent with the Paris agglomeration's growth. Paul Delouvrier promised to resolve the Paris-suburbs mésentente when he became head of the Paris region in 1961: two of his most ambitious projects for the Region were the construction of five suburban "villes nouvelles" ("new cities") and the RER commuter train network. Many other suburban residential districts (grands ensembles) were built between the 1960s and 1970s to provide a low-cost solution for a rapidly expanding population: These districts were socially mixed at first, but few residents actually owned their homes (the growing economy made these accessible to the middle classes only from the 1970s). Their poor construction quality and their haphazard insertion into existing urban growth contributed to their desertion by those able to move elsewhere and their repopulation by those with more limited possibilities.

These areas, quartiers sensibles ("sensitive quarters"), are in northern and eastern Paris, namely around its Goutte d'Or and Belleville neighbourhoods. To the north of the city, they are grouped mainly in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, and to a lesser extreme to the east in the Val-d'Oise department. Other difficult areas are located in the Seine valley, in Évry et Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne), in Mureaux, Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), and scattered among social housing districts created by Delouvrier's 1961 "ville nouvelle" political initiative.

The Paris agglomeration's urban sociology is basically that of 19th-century Paris: its fortuned classes are situated in its west and southwest, and its middle-to-lower classes are in its north and east. The remaining areas are mostly middle-class citizenry dotted with islands of fortuned populations located there due to reasons of historical importance, namely Saint-Maur-des-Fossés to the east and Enghien-les-Bains to the north of Paris.

Demographics

The official estimated population of the City of Paris was 2,206,488 , according to the INSEE, the official French statistical agency. This is a decline of 59,648 from 2015, close to the total population of the 5th arrondissement. Despite the drop, Paris remains the most densely-populated city in Europe, with 252 residents per hectare, not counting parks. This drop was attributed partly to a lower birth rate, to the departure of middle-class residents. and partly to the possible loss of housing in the city due to short-term rentals for tourism.

Paris is the fourth largest municipality in the European Union, following Berlin, Madrid and Rome. Eurostat places Paris (6.5 million people) behind London (8 million) and ahead of Berlin (3.5 million), based on the 2012 populations of what Eurostat calls "urban audit core cities".

The population of Paris today is lower than its historical peak of 2.9 million in 1921. The principal reasons were a significant decline in household size, and a dramatic migration of residents to the suburbs between 1962 and 1975. Factors in the migration included de-industrialisation, high rent, the gentrification of many inner quarters, the transformation of living space into offices, and greater affluence among working families. The city's population loss came to a temporary halt at the beginning of the 21st century; the population increased from 2,125,246 in 1999 to 2,240,621 in 2012, before declining again slightly in 2017. It declined again in 2018.

Paris is the core of a built-up area that extends well beyond its limits: commonly referred to as the agglomération Parisienne, and statistically as a unité urbaine (a measure of urban area), the Paris agglomeration's 2017 population of 10,784,830 made it the largest urban area in the European Union. City-influenced commuter activity reaches well beyond even this in a statistical aire urbaine de Paris ("urban area", but a statistical method comparable to a metropolitan area), that had a 2017 population of 12,628,266, a number 19% the population of France, and the largest metropolitan area in the Eurozone.

According to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency, in 2012 the Commune of Paris was the most densely populated city in the European Union, with 21,616 people per square kilometre within the city limits (the NUTS-3 statistical area), ahead of Inner London West, which had 10,374 people per square kilometre. According to the same census, three departments bordering Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, had population densities of over 10,000 people per square kilometre, ranking among the 10 most densely populated areas of the EU.

Migration

According to the 2012 French census, 586,163 residents of the City of Paris, or 26.2 percent, and 2,782,834 residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France), or 23.4 percent, were born outside of metropolitan France (the last figure up from 22.4% at the 2007 census). 26,700 of these in the City of Paris and 210,159 in the Paris Region were people born in Overseas France (more than two-thirds of whom in the French West Indies) and are therefore not counted as immigrants since they were legally French citizens at birth.

A further 103,648 in the City of Paris and in 412,114 in the Paris Region were born in foreign countries with French citizenship at birth. This concerns in particular the many Christians and Jews from North Africa who moved to France and Paris after the times of independence and are not counted as immigrants due to their being born French citizens. The remaining group, people born in foreign countries with no French citizenship at birth, are those defined as immigrants under French law. According to the 2012 census, 135,853 residents of the City of Paris were immigrants from Europe, 112,369 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 70,852 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 5,059 from Turkey, 91,297 from Asia (outside Turkey), 38,858 from the Americas, and 1,365 from the South Pacific. Note that the immigrants from the Americas and the South Pacific in Paris are vastly outnumbered by migrants from French overseas regions and territories located in these regions of the world.

In the Paris Region, 590,504 residents were immigrants from Europe, 627,078 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 435,339 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 69,338 from Turkey, 322,330 from Asia (outside Turkey), 113,363 from the Americas, and 2,261 from the South Pacific. These last two groups of immigrants are again vastly outnumbered by migrants from French overseas regions and territories located in the Americas and the South Pacific.

In 2012, there were 8,810 British citizens and 10,019 United States citizens living in the City of Paris (Ville de Paris) and 20,466 British citizens and 16,408 United States citizens living in the entire Paris Region (Île-de-France).

Religion

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Paris was the largest Catholic city in the world. French census data does not contain information about religious affiliation. According to a 2011 survey by the Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP), a French public opinion research organisation, 61 percent of residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France) identified themselves as Roman Catholic. In the same survey, 7 percent of residents identified themselves as Muslims, 4 percent as Protestants, 2 percent as Jewish and 25 percent as without religion.

According to the INSEE, between 4 and 5 million French residents were born or had at least one parent born in a predominantly Muslim country, particularly Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. An IFOP survey in 2008 reported that, of immigrants from these predominantly Muslim countries, 25 percent went to the mosque regularly; 41 percent practised the religion, and 34 percent were believers but did not practice the religion. In 2012 and 2013, it was estimated that there were almost 500,000 Muslims in the City of Paris, 1.5 million Muslims in the Île-de-France region and 4 to 5 million Muslims in France.

The Jewish population of the Paris Region was estimated in 2014 to be 282,000, the largest concentration of Jews in the world outside of Israel and the United States.

International organisations

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has had its headquarters in Paris since November 1958. Paris is also the home of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Paris hosts the headquarters of the European Space Agency, the International Energy Agency, European Securities and Markets Authority and, , the European Banking Authority.

Economy

The economy of the City of Paris is based largely on services and commerce; of the 390,480 enterprises in the city, 80.6 percent are engaged in commerce, transportation, and diverse services, 6.5 percent in construction, and just 3.8 percent in industry. The story is similar in the Paris Region (Île-de-France): 76.7 percent of enterprises are engaged in commerce and services, and 3.4 percent in industry.

At the 2012 census, 59.5% of jobs in the Paris Region were in market services (12.0% in wholesale and retail trade, 9.7% in professional, scientific, and technical services, 6.5% in information and communication, 6.5% in transportation and warehousing, 5.9% in finance and insurance, 5.8% in administrative and support services, 4.6% in accommodation and food services, and 8.5% in various other market services), 26.9% in non-market services (10.4% in human health and social work activities, 9.6% in public administration and defence, and 6.9% in education), 8.2% in manufacturing and utilities (6.6% in manufacturing and 1.5% in utilities), 5.2% in construction, and 0.2% in agriculture.

The Paris Region had 5.4 million salaried employees in 2010, of whom 2.2 million were concentrated in 39 pôles d'emplois or business districts. The largest of these, in terms of number of employees, is known in French as the QCA, or quartier central des affaires; it is in the western part of the City of Paris, in the 2nd, 8th, 9th, 16th, and 18th arrondissements. In 2010, it was the workplace of 500,000 salaried employees, about 30 percent of the salaried employees in Paris and 10 percent of those in the Île-de-France. The largest sectors of activity in the central business district were finance and insurance (16 percent of employees in the district) and business services (15 percent). The district also includes a large concentration of department stores, shopping areas, hotels and restaurants, as well a government offices and ministries.

The second-largest business district in terms of employment is La Défense, just west of the city, where many companies installed their offices in the 1990s. In 2010, it was the workplace of 144,600 employees, of whom 38 percent worked in finance and insurance, 16 percent in business support services. Two other important districts, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois-Perret, are extensions of the Paris business district and of La Défense. Another district, including Boulogne-Billancourt, Issy-les-Moulineaux and the southern part of the 15th arrondissement, is a centre of activity for the media and information technology.

The top ten French companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 for 2018 all have their headquarters in the Paris Region; six in the central business district of the City of Paris; and four close to the city in the Hauts-de-Seine Department, three in La Défense and one in Boulogne-Billancourt. Some companies, like Société Générale, have offices in both Paris and La Défense.

The Paris Region is France's leading region for economic activity, with a GDP of €681 billion (~US$850 billion) and €56,000 (~US$70,000) per capita. In 2011, its GDP ranked second among the regions of Europe and its per-capita GDP was the 4th highest in Europe. While the Paris region's population accounted for 18.8 percent of metropolitan France in 2011, the Paris region's GDP accounted for 30 percent of metropolitan France's GDP.

The Paris Region economy has gradually shifted from industry to high-value-added service industries (finance, IT services) and high-tech manufacturing (electronics, optics, aerospace, etc.). The Paris region's most intense economic activity through the central Hauts-de-Seine department and suburban La Défense business district places Paris' economic centre to the west of the city, in a triangle between the Opéra Garnier, La Défense and the Val de Seine. While the Paris economy is dominated by services, and employment in manufacturing sector has declined sharply, the region remains an important manufacturing centre, particularly for aeronautics, automobiles, and "eco" industries.

In the 2017 worldwide cost of living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on a survey made in September 2016, Paris ranked as the seventh most expensive city in the world, and the second most expensive in Europe, after Zurich.

In 2018, Paris was the most expensive city in the world with Singapore and Hong Kong.

Station F is a business incubator for startups, located in 13th arrondissement of Paris. Noted as the world's largest startup facility.

Employment

According to 2015 INSEE figures, 68.3 percent of employees in the City of Paris work in commerce, transportation, and services; 24.5 percent in public administration, health and social services; 4.1 percent in industry, and 0.1 percent in agriculture.

The majority of Paris' salaried employees fill 370,000 businesses services jobs, concentrated in the north-western 8th, 16th and 17th arrondissements. Paris' financial service companies are concentrated in the central-western 8th and 9th arrondissement banking and insurance district. Paris' department store district in the 1st, 6th, 8th and 9th arrondissements employ ten percent of mostly female Paris workers, with 100,000 of these registered in the retail trade. Fourteen percent of Parisians work in hotels and restaurants and other services to individuals. Nineteen percent of Paris employees work for the State in either administration or education. The majority of Paris' healthcare and social workers work at the hospitals and social housing concentrated in the peripheral 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements. Outside Paris, the western Hauts-de-Seine department La Défense district specialising in finance, insurance and scientific research district, employs 144,600, and the north-eastern Seine-Saint-Denis audiovisual sector has 200 media firms and 10 major film studios.

Paris' manufacturing is mostly focused in its suburbs, and the city itself has only around 75,000 manufacturing workers, most of which are in the textile, clothing, leather goods, and shoe trades. Paris region manufacturing specialises in transportation, mainly automobiles, aircraft and trains, but this is in a sharp decline: Paris proper manufacturing jobs dropped by 64 percent between 1990 and 2010, and the Paris region lost 48 percent during the same period. Most of this is due to companies relocating outside the Paris region. The Paris region's 800 aerospace companies employed 100,000. Four hundred automobile industry companies employ another 100,000 workers: many of these are centred in the Yvelines department around the Renault and PSA-Citroen plants (this department alone employs 33,000), but the industry as a whole suffered a major loss with the 2014 closing of a major Aulnay-sous-Bois Citroen assembly plant.

The southern Essonne department specialises in science and technology, and the south-eastern Val-de-Marne, with its wholesale Rungis food market, specialises in food processing and beverages. The Paris region's manufacturing decline is quickly being replaced by eco-industries: these employ about 100,000 workers. In 2011, while only 56,927 construction workers worked in Paris itself, its metropolitan area employed 246,639, in an activity centred largely on the Seine-Saint-Denis (41,378) and Hauts-de-Seine (37,303) departments and the new business-park centres appearing there.

Unemployment

Paris' 2015 at-census unemployment rate was 12.2%, and in the first trimester of 2018, its ILO-critera unemployment rate was 7.1 percent. The provisional unemployment rate in the whole Paris Region was higher: 8.0 percent, and considerably higher in some suburbs, notably the Department of Seine-Saint-Denis to the east (11.8 percent) and the Val-d'Oise to the north (8.2 percent).

Incomes

The average net household income (after social, pension and health insurance contributions) in Paris was €36,085 for 2011. It ranged from €22,095 in the 19th arrondissement to €82,449 in the 7th arrondissement. The median taxable income for 2011 was around €25,000 in Paris and €22,200 for Île-de-France. Generally speaking, incomes are higher in the Western part of the city and in the western suburbs than in the northern and eastern parts of the urban area. Unemployment was estimated at 8.2 percent in the City of Paris and 8.8 percent in the Île-de-France region in the first trimester of 2015. It ranged from 7.6 percent in the wealthy Essonne department to 13.1 percent in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, where many recent immigrants live.

While Paris has some of the richest neighbourhoods in France, it also has some of the poorest, mostly on the eastern side of the city. In 2012, 14 percent of households in the city earned less than €977 per month, the official poverty line. Twenty-five percent of residents in the 19th arrondissement lived below the poverty line; 24 percent in the 18th, 22 percent in the 20th and 18 percent in the 10th. In the city's wealthiest neighbourhood, the 7th arrondissement, 7 percent lived below the poverty line; 8 percent in the 6th arrondissement; and 9 percent in the 16th arrondissement.

Tourism

Greater Paris, comprising Paris and its three surrounding departments, received 38 million visitors in 2019, a record, measured by hotel arrivals. These included 12.2 million French visitors. Of foreign visitors, the greatest number came from the United States (2.6 million), United Kingdom (1.2 million), Germany (981 thousand) and China (711 thousand). However, tourism to Paris and its region fell to 17.5 million in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 78 percent drop in foreign tourists measured by hotel stays, and a drop of 56 percent in French guests, for an overall drop of 68 percent. This caused a drop 15 billion Euros in hotel receipts.

In 2018, measured by the Euromonitor Global Cities Destination Index, Paris was the second-busiest airline destination in the world, with 19.10 million visitors, behind Bangkok (22.78 million) but ahead of London (19.09 million). According to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, 393,008 workers in Greater Paris, or 12.4% of the total workforce, are engaged in tourism-related sectors such as hotels, catering, transport and leisure.

Monuments and attractions

The city's top cultural attraction in 2019 was the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur (11 million visitors), followed by the Louvre (9.6 million visitors); the Eiffel Tower (6.1 million visitors); the Centre Pompidou (3.5 million visitors); and the Musée d'Orsay (3.3 million visitors).

The centre of Paris contains the most visited monuments in the city, including the Notre Dame Cathedral (now closed for restoration) and the Louvre as well as the Sainte-Chapelle; Les Invalides, where the tomb of Napoleon is located, and the Eiffel Tower are located on the Left Bank south-west of the centre. The Panthéon and the Catacombs of Paris are also located on the Left Bank of the Seine. The banks of the Seine from the Pont de Sully to the Pont d'Iéna have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

Other landmarks are laid out east to west along the historical axis of Paris, which runs from the Louvre through the Tuileries Garden, the Luxor Column in the Place de la Concorde, and the Arc de Triomphe, to the Grande Arche of La Défense.

Several other much-visited landmarks are located in the suburbs of the city; the Basilica of St Denis, in Seine-Saint-Denis, is the birthplace of the Gothic style of architecture and the royal necropolis of French kings and queens. The Paris region hosts three other UNESCO Heritage sites: the Palace of Versailles in the west, the Palace of Fontainebleau in the south, and the medieval fairs site of Provins in the east. In the Paris region, Disneyland Paris, in Marne-la-Vallée, east of the centre of Paris, received 9.66 million visitors in 2017.

Hotels

In 2019 Greater Paris had 2,056 hotels, including 94 five-star hotels, with a total of 121,646 rooms. Paris has long been famous for its grand hotels. The Hotel Meurice, opened for British travellers in 1817, was one of the first luxury hotels in Paris. The arrival of the railways and the Paris Exposition of 1855 brought the first flood of tourists and the first modern grand hotels; the Hôtel du Louvre (now an antiques marketplace) in 1855; the Grand Hotel (now the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel) in 1862; and the Hôtel Continental in 1878. The Hôtel Ritz on Place Vendôme opened in 1898, followed by the Hôtel Crillon in an 18th-century building on the Place de la Concorde in 1909; the Hotel Bristol on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1925; and the Hotel George V in 1928.

In addition to hotels, in 2019 Greater Paris had 60,000 homes registered with Airbnb. Under French law, renters of these units must pay the Paris tourism tax. The company paid the city government 7.3 million euros in 2016.

Culture

Painting and sculpture

For centuries, Paris has attracted artists from around the world, who arrive in the city to educate themselves and to seek inspiration from its vast pool of artistic resources and galleries. As a result, Paris has acquired a reputation as the "City of Art". Italian artists were a profound influence on the development of art in Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in sculpture and reliefs. Painting and sculpture became the pride of the French monarchy and the French royal family commissioned many Parisian artists to adorn their palaces during the French Baroque and Classicism era. Sculptors such as Girardon, Coysevox and Coustou acquired reputations as the finest artists in the royal court in 17th-century France. Pierre Mignard became the first painter to King Louis XIV during this period. In 1648, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) was established to accommodate for the dramatic interest in art in the capital. This served as France's top art school until 1793.

Paris was in its artistic prime in the 19th century and early 20th century, when it had a colony of artists established in the city and in art schools associated with some of the finest painters of the times: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and others. The French Revolution and political and social change in France had a profound influence on art in the capital. Paris was central to the development of Romanticism in art, with painters such as Géricault. Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism and Art Deco movements all evolved in Paris. In the late 19th century, many artists in the French provinces and worldwide flocked to Paris to exhibit their works in the numerous salons and expositions and make a name for themselves. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and many others became associated with Paris. Picasso, living in Le Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, painted his famous La Famille de Saltimbanques and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon between 1905 and 1907. Montmartre and Montparnasse became centres for artistic production.

The most prestigious names of French and foreign sculptors, who made their reputation in Paris in the modern era, are Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Statue of Liberty – Liberty Enlightening the World), Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Antoine Bourdelle, Paul Landowski (statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro) and Aristide Maillol. The Golden Age of the School of Paris ended between the two world wars.

Photography

The inventor Nicéphore Niépce produced the first permanent photograph on a polished pewter plate in Paris in 1825. In 1839, after the death of Niépce, Louis Daguerre patented the Daguerrotype, which became the most common form of photography until the 1860s. The work of Étienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s contributed considerably to the development of modern photography. Photography came to occupy a central role in Parisian Surrealist activity, in the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard. Numerous photographers achieved renown for their photography of Paris, including Eugène Atget, noted for his depictions of street scenes, Robert Doisneau, noted for his playful pictures of people and market scenes (among which Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville has become iconic of the romantic vision of Paris), Marcel Bovis, noted for his night scenes, as well as others such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Poster art also became an important art form in Paris in the late nineteenth century, through the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Eugène Grasset, Adolphe Willette, Pierre Bonnard, Georges de Feure, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Paul Gavarni and Alphonse Mucha.

Museums

The Louvre received 2.7 million visitors in 2020, a drop of 72 percent from the 9.6 million visitors in 2019. The Louvre was closed for 150 days during the year because of the Covid-19 virus, but it still retained its position as first in the list of the Most visited art museums in the world. Its treasures include the Mona Lisa (La Joconde), the Venus de Milo statue, Liberty Leading the People. The second-most visited museum in the city in 2020, and 12th most visited art museum in the world, with 3.5 million visitors, was the Centre Georges Pompidou, also known as Beaubourg, which houses the Musée National d'Art Moderne. The third most visited Paris museum, in a building constructed for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 as the Orsay railway station, was the Musée d'Orsay, which had 3.3 million visitors in 2020, the 12th most visited art museum in 2020, but a drop of 76 percent in visitors from 2019. The Orsay displays French art of the 19th century, including major collections of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The Musée de l'Orangerie, near both the Louvre and the Orsay, also exhibits Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including most of Claude Monet's large Water Lilies murals. The Musée national du Moyen Âge, or Cluny Museum, presents Medieval art, including the famous tapestry cycle of The Lady and the Unicorn. The Guimet Museum, or Musée national des arts asiatiques, has one of the largest collections of Asian art in Europe. There are also notable museums devoted to individual artists, including the Musée Picasso, the Musée Rodin and the Musée national Eugène Delacroix.

Paris hosts one of the largest science museums in Europe, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie at La Villette. It attracted 2.2 million visitors in 2018. The National Museum of Natural History located near the Jardin des plantes attracted two million visitors in 2018. It is famous for its dinosaur artefacts, mineral collections and its Gallery of Evolution. The military history of France, from the Middle Ages to World War II, is vividly presented by displays at the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides, near the tomb of Napoleon. In addition to the national museums, run by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris operates 14 museums, including the Carnavalet Museum on the history of Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo, the House of Victor Hugo, the House of Balzac and the Catacombs of Paris. There are also notable private museums; The Contemporary Art museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, designed by architect Frank Gehry, opened in October 2014 in the Bois de Boulogne.

Theatre

The largest opera houses of Paris are the 19th-century Opéra Garnier (historical Paris Opéra) and modern Opéra Bastille; the former tends toward the more classic ballets and operas, and the latter provides a mixed repertoire of classic and modern. In middle of the 19th century, there were three other active and competing opera houses: the Opéra-Comique (which still exists), Théâtre-Italien and Théâtre Lyrique (which in modern times changed its profile and name to Théâtre de la Ville). Philharmonie de Paris, the modern symphonic concert hall of Paris, opened in January 2015. Another musical landmark is the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where the first performances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes took place in 1913.

Theatre traditionally has occupied a large place in Parisian culture, and many of its most popular actors today are also stars of French television. The oldest and most famous Paris theatre is the Comédie-Française, founded in 1680. Run by the Government of France, it performs mostly French classics at the Salle Richelieu in the Palais-Royal at 2 rue de Richelieu, next to the Louvre. of Other famous theatres include the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, next to the Luxembourg Gardens, also a state institution and theatrical landmark; the Théâtre Mogador, and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse.

The music hall and cabaret are famous Paris institutions. The Moulin Rouge was opened in 1889. It was highly visible because of its large red imitation windmill on its roof, and became the birthplace of the dance known as the French Cancan. It helped make famous the singers Mistinguett and Édith Piaf and the painter Toulouse-Lautrec, who made posters for the venue. In 1911, the dance hall Olympia Paris invented the grand staircase as a settling for its shows, competing with its great rival, the Folies Bergère. Its stars in the 1920s included the American singer and dancer Josephine Baker. Later, Olympia Paris presented Dalida, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, Miles Davis, Judy Garland and the Grateful Dead.

The Casino de Paris presented many famous French singers, including Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier and Tino Rossi. Other famous Paris music halls include Le Lido, on the Champs-Élysées, opened in 1946; and the Crazy Horse Saloon, featuring strip-tease, dance and magic, opened in 1951. A half dozen music halls exist today in Paris, attended mostly by visitors to the city.

Literature

The first book printed in France, Epistolae ("Letters"), by Gasparinus de Bergamo (Gasparino da Barzizza), was published in Paris in 1470 by the press established by Johann Heynlin. Since then, Paris has been the centre of the French publishing industry, the home of some of the world's best-known writers and poets, and the setting for many classic works of French literature. Almost all the books published in Paris in the Middle Ages were in Latin, rather than French. Paris did not become the acknowledged capital of French literature until the 17th century, with authors such as Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, several coming from the provinces, as well as the foundation of the Académie française. In the 18th century, the literary life of Paris revolved around the cafés and salons; it was dominated by Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre de Marivaux and Pierre Beaumarchais.

During the 19th century, Paris was the home and subject for some of France's greatest writers, including Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and Honoré de Balzac. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired the renovation of its setting, the Notre-Dame de Paris. Another of Victor Hugo's works, Les Misérables, written while he was in exile outside France during the Second Empire, described the social change and political turmoil in Paris in the early 1830s. One of the most popular of all French writers, Jules Verne, worked at the Theatre Lyrique and the Paris stock exchange, while he did research for his stories at the National Library.

In the 20th century, the Paris literary community was dominated by figures such as Colette, André Gide, François Mauriac, André Malraux, Albert Camus, and, after World War II, by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Between the wars it was the home of many important expatriate writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, and, in the 1970s, Milan Kundera. The winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, Patrick Modiano (who lives in Paris), based most of his literary work on the depiction of the city during World War II and the 1960s–1970s.

Paris is a city of books and bookstores. In the 1970s, 80 percent of French-language publishing houses were found in Paris, almost all on the Left Bank in the 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements. Since that time, because of high prices, some publishers have moved out to the less expensive areas. It is also a city of small bookstores. There are about 150 bookstores in the 5th arrondissement alone, plus another 250 book stalls along the Seine. Small Paris bookstores are protected against competition from discount booksellers by French law; books, even e-books, cannot be discounted more than five percent below their publisher's cover price.

Music

In the late 12th century, a school of polyphony was established at Notre-Dame. Among the Trouvères of northern France, a group of Parisian aristocrats became known for their poetry and songs. Troubadours, from the south of France, were also popular. During the reign of François I, in the Renaissance era, the lute became popular in the French court. The French royal family and courtiers "disported themselves in masques, ballets, allegorical dances, recitals, and opera and comedy", and a national musical printing house was established. In the Baroque-era, noted composers included Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and François Couperin. The Conservatoire de Musique de Paris was founded in 1795. By 1870, Paris had become an important centre for symphony, ballet and operatic music.

Romantic-era composers (in Paris) include Hector Berlioz (La Symphonie fantastique), Charles Gounod (Faust), Camille Saint-Saëns (Samson et Delilah), Léo Delibes (Lakmé) and Jules Massenet (Thaïs), among others. Georges Bizet's Carmen premiered 3 March 1875. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently-performed operas in the classical canon. Among the Impressionist composers who created new works for piano, orchestra, opera, chamber music and other musical forms, stand in particular, Claude Debussy (Suite bergamasque, and its well-known third movement, Clair de lune, La Mer, Pelléas et Mélisande), Erik Satie (Gymnopédies, "Je te veux", Gnossiennes, Parade) and Maurice Ravel (Miroirs, Boléro, La valse, L'heure espagnole). Several foreign-born composers, such as Frédéric Chopin (Poland), Franz Liszt (Hungary), Jacques Offenbach (Germany), Niccolò Paganini (Italy), and Igor Stravinsky (Russia), established themselves or made significant contributions both with their works and their influence in Paris.

Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s; by 1880 Paris had some 150 dance halls in the working-class neighbourhoods of the city. Patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a "musette") and often the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy) in the cafés and bars of the city. Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars especially in the 19th arrondissement, and the romantic sounds of the accordion has since become one of the musical icons of the city. Paris became a major centre for jazz and still attracts jazz musicians from all around the world to its clubs and cafés.

Paris is the spiritual home of gypsy jazz in particular, and many of the Parisian jazzmen who developed in the first half of the 20th century began by playing Bal-musette in the city. Django Reinhardt rose to fame in Paris, having moved to the 18th arrondissement in a caravan as a young boy, and performed with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and their Quintette du Hot Club de France in the 1930s and 1940s.

Immediately after the War the Saint-Germain-des-Pres quarter and the nearby Saint-Michel quarter became home to many small jazz clubs, mostly found in cellars because of a lack of space; these included the Caveau des Lorientais, the Club Saint-Germain, the Rose Rouge, the Vieux-Colombier, and the most famous, Le Tabou. They introduced Parisians to the music of Claude Luter, Boris Vian, Sydney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, and Henri Salvador. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.

Some of the finest manouche musicians in the world are found here playing the cafés of the city at night. Some of the more notable jazz venues include the New Morning, Le Sunset, La Chope des Puces and Bouquet du Nord. Several yearly festivals take place in Paris, including the Paris Jazz Festival and the rock festival Rock en Seine. The Orchestre de Paris was established in 1967. On 19 December 2015, Paris and other worldwide fans commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edith Piaf—a cabaret singer-songwriter and actress who became widely regarded as France's national chanteuse, as well as being one of France's greatest international stars. Other singers—of similar style—include Maurice Chevalier, Charles Aznavour, Yves Montand, as well as Charles Trenet.

Paris has a big hip hop scene. This music became popular during the 1980s. The presence of a large African and Caribbean community helped to its development, it gave a voice, a political and social status for many minorities.

Cinema

The movie industry was born in Paris when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected the first motion picture for a paying audience at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895. Many of Paris' concert/dance halls were transformed into cinemas when the media became popular beginning in the 1930s. Later, most of the largest cinemas were divided into multiple, smaller rooms. Paris' largest cinema room today is in the Grand Rex theatre with 2,700 seats.Big multiplex cinemas have been built since the 1990s. UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles with 27 screens, MK2 Bibliothèque with 20 screens and UGC Ciné Cité Bercy with 18 screens are among the largest.

Parisians tend to share the same movie-going trends as many of the world's global cities, with cinemas primarily dominated by Hollywood-generated film entertainment. French cinema comes a close second, with major directors (réalisateurs) such as Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luc Besson, and the more slapstick/popular genre with director Claude Zidi as an example. European and Asian films are also widely shown and appreciated. On 2 February 2000, Philippe Binant realised the first digital cinema projection in Europe, with the DLP CINEMA technology developed by Texas Instruments, in Paris.

Restaurants and cuisine

Since the late 18th century, Paris has been famous for its restaurants and haute cuisine, food meticulously prepared and artfully presented. A luxury restaurant, La Taverne Anglaise, opened in 1786 in the arcades of the Palais-Royal by Antoine Beauvilliers; it featured an elegant dining room, an extensive menu, linen tablecloths, a large wine list and well-trained waiters; it became a model for future Paris restaurants. The restaurant Le Grand Véfour in the Palais-Royal dates from the same period. The famous Paris restaurants of the 19th century, including the Café de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale, the Café Anglais, Maison Dorée and the Café Riche, were mostly located near the theatres on the Boulevard des Italiens; they were immortalised in the novels of Balzac and Émile Zola. Several of the best-known restaurants in Paris today appeared during the Belle Époque, including Maxim's on Rue Royale, Ledoyen in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, and the Tour d'Argent on the Quai de la Tournelle.

Today, due to Paris' cosmopolitan population, every French regional cuisine and almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there; the city has more than 9,000 restaurants. The Michelin Guide has been a standard guide to French restaurants since 1900, awarding its highest award, three stars, to the best restaurants in France. In 2018, of the 27 Michelin three-star restaurants in France, ten are located in Paris. These include both restaurants which serve classical French cuisine, such as L'Ambroisie in the Place des Vosges, and those which serve non-traditional menus, such as L'Astrance, which combines French and Asian cuisines. Several of France's most famous chefs, including Pierre Gagnaire, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno and Alain Passard, have three-star restaurants in Paris.

In addition to the classical restaurants, Paris has several other kinds of traditional eating places. The café arrived in Paris in the 17th century, when the beverage was first brought from Turkey, and by the 18th century Parisian cafés were centres of the city's political and cultural life. The Café Procope on the Left Bank dates from this period. In the 20th century, the cafés of the Left Bank, especially Café de la Rotonde and Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse and Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint Germain, all still in business, were important meeting places for painters, writers and philosophers. A bistro is a type of eating place loosely defined as a neighbourhood restaurant with a modest decor and prices and a regular clientele and a congenial atmosphere. Its name is said to have come in 1814 from the Russian soldiers who occupied the city; "bistro" means "quickly" in Russian, and they wanted their meals served rapidly so they could get back their encampment. Real bistros are increasingly rare in Paris, due to rising costs, competition from cheaper ethnic restaurants, and different eating habits of Parisian diners. A brasserie originally was a tavern located next to a brewery, which served beer and food at any hour. Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1867; it became a popular kind of restaurant which featured beer and other beverages served by young women in the national costume associated with the beverage, particular German costumes for beer. Now brasseries, like cafés, serve food and drinks throughout the day.

Fashion

Since the 19th century, Paris has been an international fashion capital, particularly in the domain of haute couture (clothing hand-made to order for private clients). It is home to some of the largest fashion houses in the world, including Dior and Chanel, as well as many other well-known and more contemporary fashion designers, such as Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Christian Lacroix. Paris Fashion Week, held in January and July in the Carrousel du Louvre among other renowned city locations, is one of the top four events on the international fashion calendar. The other fashion capitals of the world, Milan, London, and New York also host fashion weeks. Moreover, Paris is also the home of the world's largest cosmetics company: L'Oréal as well as three of the top five global makers of luxury fashion accessories: Louis Vuitton, Hermés, and Cartier. Most of the major fashion designers have their showrooms along the Avenue Montaigne, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine.

Holidays and festivals

Bastille Day, a celebration of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the biggest festival in the city, is a military parade taking place every year on 14 July on the Champs-Élysées, from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. It includes a flypast over the Champs Élysées by the Patrouille de France, a parade of military units and equipment, and a display of fireworks in the evening, the most spectacular being the one at the Eiffel Tower.

Some other yearly festivals are Paris-Plages, a festive event that lasts from mid-July to mid-August when the Right Bank of the Seine is converted into a temporary beach with sand, deck chairs and palm trees; Journées du Patrimoine, Fête de la Musique, Techno Parade, Nuit Blanche, Cinéma au clair de lune, Printemps des rues, Festival d'automne, and Fête des jardins. The Carnaval de Paris, one of the oldest festivals in Paris, dates back to the Middle Ages.

Education

Paris is the département with the highest proportion of highly educated people. In 2009, around 40 percent of Parisians held a licence-level diploma or higher, the highest proportion in France, while 13 percent have no diploma, the third-lowest percentage in France. Education in Paris and the Île-de-France region employs approximately 330,000 people, 170,000 of whom are teachers and professors teaching approximately 2.9 million children and students in around 9,000 primary, secondary, and higher education schools and institutions.

The University of Paris, founded in the 12th century, is often called the Sorbonne after one of its original medieval colleges. It was broken up into thirteen autonomous universities in 1970, following the student demonstrations in 1968. Most of the campuses today are in the Latin Quarter where the old university was located, while others are scattered around the city and the suburbs.

The Paris region hosts France's highest concentration of the grandes écoles – 55 specialised centres of higher-education outside or inside the public university structure. The prestigious public universities are usually considered grands établissements. Most of the grandes écoles were relocated to the suburbs of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, in new campuses much larger than the old campuses within the crowded City of Paris, though the École Normale Supérieure, PSL University has remained on rue d'Ulm in the 5th arrondissement. There are a high number of engineering schools, led by the PSL University (which comprises several colleges such as École des Mines, École nationale supérieure de chimie, École Pratique des Hautes Études and Paris-Dauphine), the Paris-Saclay University (which comprises several colleges such as AgroParisTech, CentraleSupélec and ENS Paris-Saclay) the Polytechnic Institute of Paris (which comprises several colleges such as École Polytechnique, Télécom Paris and École nationale de la statistique et de l'administration économique) and also independent colleges such as École des Ponts et Chaussées or Arts et Métiers. There are also many business schools, including HEC, INSEAD, ESSEC, and ESCP Europe. The administrative school such as ENA has been relocated to Strasbourg, the political science school Sciences-Po is still located in Paris' 7th arrondissement, the most prestigious university for social sciences, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales is located in Paris' 6th arrondissement and the most prestigious university of economics and finance, Paris-Dauphine, is located in Paris' 16th. The Parisian school of journalism CELSA department of Sorbonne University is located in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Paris is also home to several of France's most famous high-schools such as Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Lycée Henri-IV, Lycée Janson de Sailly and Lycée Condorcet. The National Institute of Sport and Physical Education, located in the 12th arrondissement, is both a physical education institute and high-level training centre for elite athletes.

Libraries

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) operates public libraries in Paris, among them the François Mitterrand Library, Richelieu Library, Louvois, Opéra Library, and Arsenal Library. There are three public libraries in the 4th arrondissement. The Forney Library, in the Marais district, is dedicated to the decorative arts; the Arsenal Library occupies a former military building, and has a large collection on French literature; and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, also in Le Marais, contains the Paris historical research service. The Sainte-Geneviève Library is in 5th arrondissement; designed by Henri Labrouste and built in the mid-1800s, it contains a rare book and manuscript division. Bibliothèque Mazarine, in the 6th arrondissement, is the oldest public library in France. The Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in the 8th arrondissement opened in 1986 and contains collections related to music. The François Mitterrand Library (nicknamed Très Grande Bibliothèque) in the 13th arrondissement was completed in 1994 to a design of Dominique Perrault and contains four glass towers.

There are several academic libraries and archives in Paris. The Sorbonne Library in the 5th arrondissement is the largest university library in Paris. In addition to the Sorbonne location, there are branches in Malesherbes, Clignancourt-Championnet, Michelet-Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, Serpente-Maison de la Recherche, and Institut des Etudes Ibériques. Other academic libraries include Interuniversity Pharmaceutical Library, Leonardo da Vinci University Library, Paris School of Mines Library, and the René Descartes University Library.

Sports

Paris' most popular sport clubs are the association football club Paris Saint-Germain F.C. and the rugby union clubs Stade Français and Racing 92, the last of which is based just outside the city proper. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis. It is used for football, rugby union and track and field athletics. It hosts the French national football team for friendlies and major tournaments qualifiers, annually hosts the French national rugby team's home matches of the Six Nations Championship, and hosts several important matches of the Stade Français rugby team. In addition to Paris Saint-Germain F.C., the city has a number of other professional and amateur football clubs: Paris FC, Red Star, RCF Paris and Stade Français Paris.

Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The city also hosted the finals of the 1938 FIFA World Cup (at the Stade Olympique de Colombes), as well as the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2007 Rugby World Cup Final (both at the Stade de France). Two UEFA Champions League Finals in the current century have also been played in the Stade de France: the 2000 and 2006 editions. Paris has most recently been the host for UEFA Euro 2016, both at the Parc des Princes in the city proper and also at Stade de France, with the latter hosting the opening match and final.

The final stage of the most famous bicycle racing in the world, Tour de France, always finishes in Paris. Since 1975, the race has finished on the Champs-Elysées.

Tennis is another popular sport in Paris and throughout France; the French Open, held every year on the red clay of the Roland Garros National Tennis Centre, is one of the four Grand Slam events of the world professional tennis tour. The 17,000-seat Bercy Arena (officially named AccorHotels Arena and formerly known as the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy) is the venue for the annual Paris Masters ATP Tour tennis tournament and has been a frequent site of national and international tournaments in basketball, boxing, cycling, handball, ice hockey, show jumping and other sports. The Bercy Arena also hosted the 2017 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship, together with Cologne, Germany. The final stages of the FIBA EuroBasket 1951 and EuroBasket 1999 were also played in Paris, the latter at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy.

The basketball team Levallois Metropolitans plays some of its games at the 4,000 capacity Stade Pierre de Coubertin. Another top-level professional team, Nanterre 92, plays in Nanterre.

Infrastructure

Transport

Paris is a major rail, highway, and air transport hub. Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), formerly the Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France (STIF) and before that the Syndicat des transports parisiens (STP), oversees the transit network in the region. The syndicate coordinates public transport and contracts it out to the RATP (operating 347 bus lines, the Métro, eight tramway lines, and sections of the RER), the SNCF (operating suburban rails, one tramway line and the other sections of the RER) and the Optile consortium of private operators managing 1,176 bus lines.

Bike lanes are being doubled, while electric car incentives are being created. The French capital is banning the most polluting automobiles from key districts.

Railways

A central hub of the national rail network, Paris' six major railway stations (Gare du Nord, Gare de l'Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d'Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse, Gare Saint-Lazare) and a minor one (Gare de Bercy) are connected to three networks: the TGV serving four high-speed rail lines, the normal speed Corail trains, and the suburban rails (Transilien).

Métro, RER and tramway

Since the inauguration of its first line in 1900, Paris's Métro network has grown to become the city's most widely used local transport system; today it carries about 5.23 million passengers daily through 16 lines, 303 stations (385 stops) and of rails. Superimposed on this is a 'regional express network', the RER, whose five lines (A, B, C, D, and E), 257 stops and of rails connect Paris to more distant parts of the urban area.

Over €26.5 billion will be invested over the next 15 years to extend the Métro network into the suburbs, with notably the Grand Paris Express project.

In addition, the Paris region is served by a light rail network of nine lines, the tramway: Line T1 runs from Asnières-Gennevilliers to Noisy-le-Sec, Line T2 runs from Pont de Bezons to Porte de Versailles, Line T3a runs from Pont du Garigliano to Porte de Vincennes, Line T3b runs from Porte de Vincennes to Porte d'Asnières, Line T5 runs from Saint-Denis to Garges-Sarcelles, Line T6 runs from Châtillon to Viroflay, Line T7 runs from Villejuif to Athis-Mons, Line T8 runs from Saint-Denis to Épinay-sur-Seine and Villetaneuse, all of which are operated by the RATP Group, and line T4 runs from Bondy RER to Aulnay-sous-Bois, which is operated by the state rail carrier SNCF. Five new light rail lines are currently in various stages of development.

Air

Paris is a major international air transport hub with the 5th busiest airport system in the world. The city is served by three commercial international airports: Paris–Charles de Gaulle, Paris–Orly and Beauvais–Tillé Airport. Together these three airports recorded traffic of 96.5 million passengers in 2014. There is also one general aviation airport, Paris-Le Bourget, historically the oldest Parisian airport and closest to the city centre, which is now used only for private business flights and air shows.

Orly Airport, located in the southern suburbs of Paris, replaced Le Bourget as the principal airport of Paris from the 1950s to the 1980s. Charles de Gaulle Airport, located on the edge of the northern suburbs of Paris, opened to commercial traffic in 1974 and became the busiest Parisian airport in 1993. For the year 2017 it was the 5th busiest airport in the world by international traffic and it is the hub for the nation's flag carrier Air France. Beauvais-Tillé Airport, located north of Paris' city centre, is used by charter airlines and low-cost carriers such as Ryanair.

Domestically, air travel between Paris and some of France's largest cities such as Lyon, Marseille, or Strasbourg has been in a large measure replaced by high-speed rail due to the opening of several high-speed TGV rail lines from the 1980s. For example, after the LGV Méditerranée opened in 2001, air traffic between Paris and Marseille declined from 2,976,793 passengers in 2000 to 1,502,196 passengers in 2014. After the LGV Est opened in 2007, air traffic between Paris and Strasbourg declined from 1,006,327 passengers in 2006 to 157,207 passengers in 2014.

Internationally, air traffic has increased markedly in recent years between Paris and the Gulf airports, the emerging nations of Africa, Russia, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, and mainland China, whereas noticeable decline has been recorded between Paris and the British Isles, Egypt, Tunisia, and Japan.

Motorways

The city is also the most important hub of France's motorway network, and is surrounded by three orbital freeways: the Périphérique, which follows the approximate path of 19th-century fortifications around Paris, the A86 motorway in the inner suburbs, and finally the Francilienne motorway in the outer suburbs. Paris has an extensive road network with over of highways and motorways.

Waterways

The Paris region is the most active water transport area in France, with most of the cargo handled by Ports of Paris in facilities located around Paris. The rivers Loire, Rhine, Rhône, Meuse, and Scheldt can be reached by canals connecting with the Seine, which include the Canal Saint-Martin, Canal Saint-Denis, and the Canal de l'Ourcq.

Cycling

There are of cycle paths and routes in Paris. These include piste cyclable (bike lanes separated from other traffic by physical barriers such as a kerb) and bande cyclable (a bicycle lane denoted by a painted path on the road). Some of specially marked bus lanes are free to be used by cyclists, with a protective barrier protecting against encroachments from vehicles. Cyclists have also been given the right to ride in both directions on certain one-way streets. Paris offers a bike sharing system called Vélib' with more than 20,000 public bicycles distributed at 1,800 parking stations, which can be rented for short and medium distances including one way trips.

Electricity

Electricity is provided to Paris through a peripheral grid fed by multiple sources. , around 50% of electricity generated in the Île-de-France comes from cogeneration energy plants located near the outer limits of the region; other energy sources include the Nogent Nuclear Power Plant (35%), trash incineration (9% – with cogeneration plants, these provide the city in heat as well), methane gas (5%), hydraulics (1%), solar power (0.1%) and a negligible amount of wind power (0.034 GWh). A quarter of the city's district heating is to come from a plant in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, burning a 50/50-mix of coal and 140,000 tonnes of wood pellets from the United States per year.

Water and sanitation

Paris in its early history had only the rivers Seine and Bièvre for water. From 1809, the Canal de l'Ourcq provided Paris with water from less-polluted rivers to the north-east of the capital. From 1857, the civil engineer Eugène Belgrand, under Napoleon III, oversaw the construction of a series of new aqueducts that brought water from locations all around the city to several reservoirs built atop the Capital's highest points of elevation. From then on, the new reservoir system became Paris' principal source of drinking water, and the remains of the old system, pumped into lower levels of the same reservoirs, were from then on used for the cleaning of Paris' streets. This system is still a major part of Paris' modern water-supply network. Today Paris has more than of underground passageways dedicated to the evacuation of Paris' liquid wastes.

In 1982, Mayor Chirac introduced the motorcycle-mounted Motocrotte to remove dog faeces from Paris streets. The project was abandoned in 2002 for a new and better enforced local law, under the terms of which dog owners can be fined up to €500 for not removing their dog faeces. The air pollution in Paris, from the point of view of particulate matter (PM10), is the highest in France with 38 μg/m3.

Parks and gardens

Paris today has more than 421 municipal parks and gardens, covering more than 3,000 hectares and containing more than 250,000 trees. Two of Paris's oldest and most famous gardens are the Tuileries Garden (created in 1564 for the Tuileries Palace and redone by André Le Nôtre between 1664 and 1672) and the Luxembourg Garden, for the Luxembourg Palace, built for Marie de' Medici in 1612, which today houses the Senate. The Jardin des plantes was the first botanical garden in Paris, created in 1626 by Louis XIII's doctor Guy de La Brosse for the cultivation of medicinal plants.

Between 1853 and 1870, Emperor Napoleon III and the city's first director of parks and gardens, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, created the Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes, Parc Montsouris and Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, located at the four points of the compass around the city, as well as many smaller parks, squares and gardens in the Paris's quarters. Since 1977, the city has created 166 new parks, most notably the Parc de la Villette (1987), Parc André Citroën (1992), Parc de Bercy (1997) and Parc Clichy-Batignolles (2007). One of the newest parks, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine (2013), built on a former highway on the left bank of the Seine between the Pont de l'Alma and the Musée d'Orsay, has floating gardens and gives a view of the city's landmarks.

Weekly Parkruns take place in the Bois de Boulogne and the Parc Montsouris

Cemeteries

During the Roman era, the city's main cemetery was located to the outskirts of the left bank settlement, but this changed with the rise of Catholic Christianity, where most every inner-city church had adjoining burial grounds for use by their parishes. With Paris's growth many of these, particularly the city's largest cemetery, the Holy Innocents' Cemetery, were filled to overflowing, creating quite unsanitary conditions for the capital. When inner-city burials were condemned from 1786, the contents of all Paris' parish cemeteries were transferred to a renovated section of Paris's stone mines outside the "Porte d'Enfer" city gate, today place Denfert-Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement. The process of moving bones from the Cimetière des Innocents to the catacombs took place between 1786 and 1814; part of the network of tunnels and remains can be visited today on the official tour of the catacombs.

After a tentative creation of several smaller suburban cemeteries, the Prefect Nicholas Frochot under Napoleon Bonaparte provided a more definitive solution in the creation of three massive Parisian cemeteries outside the city limits. Open from 1804, these were the cemeteries of Père Lachaise, Montmartre, Montparnasse, and later Passy; these cemeteries became inner-city once again when Paris annexed all neighbouring communes to the inside of its much larger ring of suburban fortifications in 1860. New suburban cemeteries were created in the early 20th century: The largest of these are the Cimetière parisien de Saint-Ouen, the Cimetière parisien de Pantin (also known as Cimetière parisien de Pantin-Bobigny), the Cimetière parisien d'Ivry, and the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux. Some of the most famous people in the world are buried in Parisian cemeteries, such as Oscar Wilde and Serge Gainsbourg among others.

Healthcare

Health care and emergency medical service in the City of Paris and its suburbs are provided by the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), a public hospital system that employs more than 90,000 people (including practitioners, support personnel, and administrators) in 44 hospitals. It is the largest hospital system in Europe. It provides health care, teaching, research, prevention, education and emergency medical service in 52 branches of medicine. The hospitals receive more than 5.8 million annual patient visits.

One of the most notable hospitals is the Hôtel-Dieu, founded in 651, the oldest hospital in the city, although the current building is the product of a reconstruction of 1877. Other hospitals include Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (one of the largest in Europe), Hôpital Cochin, Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital, Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou, Bicêtre Hospital, Beaujon Hospital, the Curie Institute, Lariboisière Hospital, Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital, Hôpital Saint-Louis, Hôpital de la Charité and the American Hospital of Paris.

Media

Paris and its close suburbs is home to numerous newspapers, magazines and publications including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Canard enchaîné, La Croix, Pariscope, Le Parisien (in Saint-Ouen), Les Échos, Paris Match (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Réseaux & Télécoms, Reuters France, and L'Officiel des Spectacles. France's two most prestigious newspapers, Le Monde and Le Figaro, are the centrepieces of the Parisian publishing industry. Agence France-Presse is France's oldest, and one of the world's oldest, continually operating news agencies. AFP, as it is colloquially abbreviated, maintains its headquarters in Paris, as it has since 1835. France 24 is a television news channel owned and operated by the French government, and is based in Paris. Another news agency is France Diplomatie, owned and operated by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, and pertains solely to diplomatic news and occurrences.

The most-viewed network in France, TF1, is in nearby Boulogne-Billancourt. France 2, France 3, Canal+, France 5, M6 (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Arte, D8, W9, NT1, NRJ 12, La Chaîne parlementaire, France 4, BFM TV, and Gulli are other stations located in and around the capital. Radio France, France's public radio broadcaster, and its various channels, is headquartered in Paris' 16th arrondissement. Radio France Internationale, another public broadcaster is also based in the city. Paris also holds the headquarters of the La Poste, France's national postal carrier.

International relations

Twin towns and sister cities

Since 9 April 1956, Paris is exclusively and reciprocally twinned only with:

• Rome, Italy, 1956

Seule Paris est digne de Rome ; seule Rome est digne de Paris.

Solo Parigi è degna di Roma; solo Roma è degna di Parigi.

"Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris."

Other relationships

Paris has agreements of friendship and co-operation with:

• Algiers, 2003

• Amman, 1987

• Athens, 2000

• Beijing, 1997

• Beirut, 1992

• Berlin, 1987

• Bucharest

• Buenos Aires, 1999

• Cairo, 1985

• Casablanca, 2004

• Chicago, 1996

• Copenhagen, 2005

• Geneva, 2002

• Hanoi, 2013

• Jakarta, 1995

• Kyoto, 1958

• Lisbon, 1998

• London, 2001

• Madrid, 2000

• Mexico City, 1999

• Montreal, 2006

• Moscow, 1992

• New York City, 2007

• Porto Alegre, 2001

• Prague, 1997

• Quebec City, 2003

• Rabat, 2004

• Riyadh, 1997

• Saint Petersburg, 1997

• Sana'a, 1987

• San Francisco, 1996

• Santiago, 1997

• São Paulo, 2004

• Seoul, 1991

• Sofia, 1998

• Sydney, 1998

• Tbilisi, 1997

• Tehran, 2004

• Tokyo, 1982

• Tunis, 2004

• Ubon Ratchathani, 2000

• Warsaw, 1999

• Washington, D.C., 2000

• Yerevan, 1998

地名

「Paris」一詞源自古代高盧的一個分支：巴黎希人（Parisii），該部落於公元前3世紀於塞納河一帶聚居。有說「巴黎希」（Parisii）這個名稱源自荷馬史詩《伊利亞特》中的特洛伊王子帕里斯（法語:Pâris，古希臘語:Πάρις），在羅馬人來到此地後，將其命名為盧泰西亞（拉丁語：Lutetia（）或Lutetia Parisiorum），也就是後來的呂泰斯（法文：，）。另一種說法則認為帕里斯是是來自凱爾特語中的parisio，意為「工作中的人」或「工匠」。如果是女生的名字則寓意「公主」。當時的呂得斯只是一個河邊的小鎮，僅佔今日巴黎範圍中心的一小部分而已。後來在君士坦丁王朝的羅馬皇帝尤利安在位（360年至363年）時，這座城市改名為巴黎。

巴黎有許多暱稱，但是最有名的稱呼是「光城」（La Ville-Lumière） ，因為巴黎是啟蒙時代教育及文化中心，而且很早就開始使用街燈。法國歌手赫諾·塞尚發明的黑話將巴黎稱為Paname 。他的歌曲從70年代至今在法語世界有深刻持續的影響，尤其在青少年族群中廣受歡迎。

居住在巴黎地區的人通常被稱為Parisiens，有時更被戲稱為Parigots。Parigots這個名稱是由居住在巴黎地區以外的人在1900年發明的。

歷史

早期

巴黎是世界上最古老的城市之一，根據考古資料，巴黎地區在舊石器時代晚期的四萬年前，已經有先民定居，另外又發現了公元前4200年左右的村莊遺址. 。凱爾特人當中的高盧人分支巴黎西人在公元前250年就已經居住在塞納河沿岸 ，所以巴黎市的核心就位於塞納河上的西提島（又譯為「西岱島」或「城島」，Île de la Cité）。

公元前52年，羅馬人征服了巴黎地區。此前，巴黎是一個名為巴黎西（Parisii）的凱爾特高盧人部落的聚居地。公元358年，羅馬人開始在此建造宮殿，這一年被視為巴黎建城的開始。羅馬人起初將該這座城市命名為盧泰西亞（Lutetia）並于四世紀時改名為巴黎。羅馬時期高盧行省的中心位于法國南方的里昂，而巴黎是一個低規模的人類聚居地，人口集中在塞納河左岸。巴黎在接下來的幾個世紀中持續擴張，成為一個擁有宮殿、競技場、浴場與花園的繁華城市。

中古時代

公元508年，法蘭克人佔領了巴黎，國王克洛維一世將巴黎定為墨洛溫王朝的首都，法蘭克人用木板在這裡開始建造教堂和宮殿。但是此時的法蘭克王國只是一個部落的聚合體，政治體系仍不穩定。克洛維一世死後，法蘭克王國被其後代瓜分，巴黎因此再度淪為地方性城市。加洛林王朝時期，法蘭克王國的首都一直在亞琛等城市之間變換，巴黎當時由「強者」羅貝爾來統治。公元9世紀，維京人入侵法國，並於公元845年進攻巴黎，於是巴黎人在城市周圍建起了城牆抵禦維京人侵略。因為加洛林王朝的最後一個國王胖子查理軟弱無能，於是在抵抗維京人進攻中享有盛譽的巴黎伯爵、羅貝爾之子奧多（Odo），在公元888年由大領主們推選為西法蘭克王國的國王。奧多的曾孫雨果·卡佩於987年加冕為法蘭西國王，創立了卡佩王朝，同時巴黎也首次成為西法蘭克王國的首都。

從公元11世紀開始，巴黎開始向塞納河右岸發展。路易六世在右岸地區建立了市場和道路。腓力二世（奧古斯都）建設了首座環繞巴黎的城牆，還拓寬了城市道路，建設公共噴泉，同時修建了羅浮宮。巴黎於公元1348年遭到黑死病襲擊，當時巴黎約有200,000人居住，而這次黑死病曾經在一天之內就造成800人死亡，並在1466年再度造成40,000人死亡 。巴黎在百年戰爭中被英國和勃艮第公國的軍隊佔領，但是後來瓦盧瓦王朝國王查理七世收複巴黎，在1453年結束了百年戰爭。1356年巴黎修建了第二道城牆。

1356年，王太子查理召開三級會議，籌備軍資和贖金，卻無意應答巴黎市民代表要求擴大三級會議權限、限制王權。1358年2月，巴黎市民艾蒂安·馬賽爾領導下起義，衝入王宮，查理出逃。後起義者聯合扎克雷起義未果，查理調軍圍困巴黎，起義者遭鎮壓。

1436年，查理七世收復了巴黎。巴黎恢復了首都的地位，但是法國真正的權力中心仍然在羅亞爾河流域 。

16世紀初（1528年），弗朗索瓦一世在巴黎周邊建造了眾多的城堡，法國的權力中心因此變為巴黎。1564年，凱瑟琳·德·美第奇王太后下令在城市中央修建杜伊勒里宮和花園，並將它與盧浮宮連接起來。1572年8月24日的聖巴托羅繆之夜，巴黎發生了天主教勢力對基督新教雨格諾派的大屠殺，屠殺從巴黎擴散到其他一些城市，持續了幾個月之久。波旁王朝時期，巴黎繼續向四周發展，直到後來路易十四興建凡爾賽宮，並將宮廷和行政機構遷往凡爾賽宮。此時的巴黎環境骯髒，道路曲折，街道狹窄，房屋稠密，且多為木結構，是一座典型的中世紀城市，擁有近50萬人口和25,000間房屋。鼠疫在16及17世紀又多次侵襲巴黎，奪走許多人的生命。

18至19世紀

1789年7月14日，法國大革命爆發，起義軍攻占巴士底獄。大量巴黎的舊地名因此被更改：路易十五廣場被更名為協和廣場，巴黎聖母院被更名為「理性堂」，傑出的哥特式建築聖雅克教堂被夷平，旺多姆廣場的路易十四銅像、新橋的亨利四世銅像和巴黎其他各處的國王銅像被推翻。法國大革命結束後，拿破侖對巴黎進行新的擴建工作，興建巴黎凱旋門和盧浮宮的南北兩翼，整修塞納河兩岸，疏浚河道，並修建大批古典主義的宮殿、大廈、公寓。1814年3月13日，拿破侖兵敗滑鐵盧，巴黎被俄羅斯及聯軍勢力佔領，這是巴黎四百年來首次被他國佔領。

此後的巴黎歷經反法同盟佔領、1830年七月革命、1848年革命。到拿破侖三世時期，巴黎自中世紀沿革而成的市街風貌及古老狹隘的城市動線已不符合十九世紀西方對於一國之都的期待及需求。1859年，法國規模最大的都市規劃事業——奧斯曼工程正式啟動，奧斯曼工程讓巴黎成為現代都市的模範，也極大地改變巴黎的規劃格局。奧斯曼工程拆除巴黎的外城牆，建設環城路，在舊城區開闢出許多筆直的林蔭大道，並建設眾多新古典主義風格的廣場、公園、住宅區、醫院、火車站、圖書館、學校，以及公共噴泉和街心雕塑，還利用巴黎地下縱橫交錯的舊石礦建造城市供水及排水系統。但他也拆掉許多珍貴的歷史遺產和文物，對巴黎舊城的破壞一直存在歷史爭議。奧斯曼男爵在沒有提供暫時住所的情況下拆除巴黎市區所有貧民區，將貧民全趕到城外，另外為避免革命再起，將許多運河地下化，讓軍方的瞭望塔沒有死角，使反抗人士無法躲在河堤開槍與政府軍對抗。

在這段期間，霍亂在1832年與1849年兩度侵襲巴黎，造成巴黎人口嚴重下降。單單1832年這次霍亂大流行就造成20,000人死亡，當時巴黎的人口也只有650,000人。

1870年普法戰爭和1871年巴黎公社期間，巴黎再一次遭到戰爭的破壞。1871年5月24日，巴黎公社放火燒燬巴黎的大量主要建築。此後巴黎經歷第二次大規模發展時期。作為法國大革命一百週年紀念，同時為了迎接1889年世界博覽會，巴黎政府於1889年修建埃菲爾鐵塔，這次世界博覽會也讓巴黎成為世界上重要的觀光與貿易中心。埃菲爾鐵塔直到1930年帝國大廈落成之前都是世界上最高的建築物。巴黎政府為迎接1900年世界博覽會修建巴黎地鐵，同時建造大皇宮和小皇宮。

20世紀

在第一次世界大戰和第二次世界大戰期間，巴黎都沒有遭到嚴重破壞。巴黎在戰間期文化及藝術迅速發展，並吸引許多著名藝術家、音樂家與文學家聚集，例如伊戈爾·費奧多羅維奇·斯特拉文斯基、薩爾瓦多·達利、海明威與巴勃羅·畢卡索等人。

1940年6月14日，巴黎在法國戰役開始5個禮拜後遭到德軍佔領。當時德軍從凱旋門通過，紀念拿破崙於1800年馬倫哥戰役勝利140週年。1944年巴黎解放前夕，希特勒曾經下令徹底摧毀這座城市，但是指揮官迪特里希·馮·寇爾蒂茨最後並沒有執行這個命令。德軍最後在1944年8月25日撤出巴黎，巴黎終於獲得解放，法國人在戴高樂領導群眾下能越過凱旋門，慶祝戰爭的勝利。

第二次世界大戰結束後，巴黎繼續朝向四周發展，並於1970年代停止盲目擴張，改為發展郊區衛星城。1970年代末開始，法國政府在巴黎西郊的上塞納省（Hauts de Seine）建設了拉德芳斯中心商務區。環城大道與區域快鐵的完成讓巴黎與鄰近地區可以緊密連結，使得巴黎的大眾運輸系統更加完善。

從1970年代開始，巴黎內部許多地區已經進行限制工業化程序，而許多外來移民也持續移入巴黎地區，失業者與外來移民造成許多社會問題。在此同時，巴黎與西方及南方的郊區已經從傳統製造業成功轉型為服務業與高科技製造業，居民的所得也晉升歐洲的頂尖行列。這種結果也導致區域之間產生社會鴻溝，特別是從1980年代中期開始，例如2005年法國騷亂就是發生在巴黎東北郊區。

21世紀

為了去降低巴黎內部社會的緊張並促進經濟發展，巴黎政府正在進行許多計劃。首都地區拓展事務國務秘書克里斯丁·布朗（Christian Blanc）於2008年就任，負責法國總統尼古拉·薩科齊的大巴黎計畫（Grand Paris）。在此同時，幾棟摩天大樓於2006年獲得政府批准，準備建造在拉德芳斯商業區，並預計於2010年代初完工。這項計劃也是巴黎自從蒙帕納斯大樓在1973年完成後，首次進行的大規模摩天大樓興建計劃。

如今巴黎作為法國的首都和政治、文化、商業中心，仍然發揮著無可取代的功能。

地理

位置

巴黎處於法國北部巴黎盆地的中央。市區位於塞納河沿岸。河上的西堤島與聖路易島是巴黎最古老的地區。狹義的巴黎市只包括原巴黎城牆內的20個區，面積為86.928平方公里 ，人口超過220萬。大巴黎地區還包括分佈在巴黎城牆周圍、由同巴黎連成一片的市區組成的上塞納省、瓦勒德馬恩省和塞納-聖但尼省。巴黎市、上述三個省以及伊夫林省、瓦勒德瓦茲省、塞納-馬恩省和埃松省共同組成巴黎大區。這片地區在古代就被稱作法蘭西島。

巴黎市區地形相對平緩。最低點海拔為35公尺。最高點位於北方的蒙馬特，海拔為130公尺。市區內有幾座小山丘。

受到北大西洋洋流的影響，巴黎屬於溫帶海洋性氣候，終年盛行西風。冬天的巴黎，難得見到太陽，雨水比較充沛，霧氣較多。夏天平均溫度介於攝氏15至25度之間，但是最高溫有時也會超過30度（例如2003年歐洲熱浪期間）。最近幾年來，巴黎7月的平均溫度是攝氏17.6度，平均低溫是攝氏12.9度，平均高溫則是攝氏23.7度。

巴黎整年都會降雨，但是巴黎並不是非常多雨的城市，偶發性的大雨反而比較常見。巴黎每年降雨量為652公厘，每個月份都十分平均。巴黎有史以來記錄到的最高溫出現在2019年7月25日（攝氏43.6度），最低溫則出現在1879年12月10日（攝氏-23.9度）。

人口

巴黎在1921年時人口為290萬人，達到歷史新高，此後人口逐漸減少。截至2009年為止，巴黎市內人口超過223萬人。在1962年至1975年之間，大量人口從市區往郊區移動，主因為高房價、工業化程度下降、人口士紳化及大眾運輸系統發展所造成的。人口流失對於巴黎造成負面影響，不過在市政府的努力下，2004年7月的人口自從1954年以來首次出現正成長。

巴黎是世界上人口密度最高的城市之一。如果將文森森林與布洛涅森林排除在外的話，巴黎市區的人口密度達到每平方公里24,448人（根據1999年人口普查），與亞洲的人口稠密地帶相當。即使包含文森森林與布洛涅森林，巴黎市區的人口密度仍然有每平方公里20,164人，位居法國第5位，僅次於佩聖熱爾維（Le Pré-Saint-Gervais）、文森、勒瓦盧瓦-佩雷與聖芒代，這些地區都位在巴黎附近。

巴黎市西邊的區域人口較為稀少，巴黎十一區每平方公里有40,672人（1999年），而東部與北部的區域每平方公里則高達100,000人。

法蘭西島以巴黎為中心，因此俗稱為大巴黎地區，包括巴黎省（75省）、上塞納省（92省）、塞納-聖但尼省（93省）、瓦勒德馬恩省（94省）、塞納-馬恩省（77省）、伊夫琳省（78省）、埃松省（91省）和瓦勒德瓦茲省（95省）。巴黎市區相當緊密，遠比郊區還要小。巴黎郊區的面積廣達2,845平方公里，幾乎是市區的27倍大。巴黎都會區的人口自從法國宗教戰爭於16世紀結束後就一直穩定成長，雖然法國大革命與第二次世界大戰阻礙人口增加。巴黎都會區的人口於近年來快速增加，目前已經有超過1200萬人居住，法蘭西島的人口成長率快速上升。

移民

巴黎與巴黎都會區是歐洲最大的多元文化區域之一。在2011年的人口普查中，23.1%的人口出生於法國本土以外的地區。2009年的人口普查也顯示巴黎都會區4.2%的人口是新移民（1990年至1999年間移入巴黎），主要從亞洲與非洲移入 。37%的法國移民居住在巴黎都會區。

首波國際移民潮出現在1820年代，當時德國人因為農業危機而移居巴黎。接下來持續有幾波移民潮出現，義大利人與歐洲中部的猶太人於19世紀移居巴黎，許多俄羅斯人於1917年俄國革命結束後離開蘇聯，亞美尼亞種族大屠殺讓大量的亞美尼亞人逃進法國，居住在殖民地的法國人於第一次世界大戰後返回法國，大量的波蘭人於兩次世界大戰間前往法國，葡萄牙人、義大利人與北非人在1950年代至1970年代之間移居巴黎，北非的猶太人在北非脫離殖民國家統治後也紛紛前往巴黎。

巴黎都會區估計有170萬戶穆斯林家庭，大約佔10%–15%的人口。但是這個數據是以出生國來估計的，所以很可能有誤，因為有些出生在穆斯林家庭或回教國家的居民被認為是「潛在的穆斯林」。根據北美的猶太人銀行估計，大約有310,000猶太人居住在巴黎與法蘭西島。巴黎從以前開始就吸引許多外來移民，是歐洲最大的移民區之一。

根據法國國家統計與經濟研究所（Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques，INSEE）的研究顯示，居住在巴黎的居民中有20%是外來移民，20歲以下的居民中有41.3%至少有一位雙親是外來移民。在18歲以下的居民中，12.1%是馬格里布人、9.9%來自撒哈拉以南非洲、4.0%則有南歐的血統。35%的法蘭西島居民，大約有400萬人不是外來移民（17%）就是雙親中至少有一位是外來移民（18%）。

根據不完全統計，大約30萬華人居住在大巴黎地區，其中大約有15萬生活在巴黎市區。主要集中在第三區、第十三區、第十九區和美麗城附近。

經濟

巴黎商會是歐洲第一大商會，巴黎也是法國多數國際大企業的總部所在地，巴黎主要的商業區為拉德芳斯。巴黎在2012年3月英國智庫的全球金融中心指數中名列世界第22位，也是歐洲第7位，法國首位。巴黎在國際金融中心發展指數中排名世界第7位。

巴黎都會區在2009年的GDP約為5521億歐元，這使得巴黎成為世界經濟的「發動機」之一，巴黎的GDP也是歐洲最高的地區之一。巴黎如若是一個國家的話，它將排到世界第十七大經濟體的位置，幾近於荷蘭全國的經濟總量。巴黎是法國經濟的中心，儘管它只占法國都會人口的18.8%，但其GDP量卻占法國都會的29.5%（2009年）。儘管巴黎都會區的經濟活動多種多樣，卻沒有一個特別突出的專門製造業（比如洛杉磯是娛樂業的中心，而東京、倫敦和紐約除其它活動相當興盛之外，還是金融中心，但是巴黎卻不是這樣的城市）。近幾年來，巴黎的經濟活動開始轉向高附加值的服務業（例如金融與資訊科技等）和高科技製造業。

巴黎都會區最高密度的商業活動聚集在嘉尼葉宮（Palais Garnier，即巴黎歌劇院）、拉德芳斯與塞納河畔商業區之間的三角地區，其中拉德芳斯商業區是歐洲最大中心商務辦公區。雖然巴黎以第三產業為主，但是仍是歐洲重要的第二產業中心，特別是航空業、汽車業與電子業。

根據1999年的人口普查顯示，巴黎都會區有5,089,170名就業人口，其中16.5%從事商業活動，13.0%從事零售業活動，12.3%從事製造業活動，10.0%從事公共行政或國防工業，8.7%從事醫療相關活動，8.2%從事運輸活動，6.6%從事教育活動而24.7%則從事其他各種產業（其中觀光業為6.2%）。電子業的員工是所有產業中最多的一種，出版業與印刷業也佔相當大的比例。根據許多資料顯示，移入居民居住的郊區失業率介於20至40%之間。高所得的居民集中在巴黎西部地區（尤其是第六區、第八區、第七區與第十六區），而收入較低的移入居民則多半居住在東部及北部地區（尤其是第十區、第十八區、第十九區與第二十區）。

行政

即使人口持續增加，巴黎的行政區從1860年以來就沒有重大變化。目前「大巴黎」計劃仍然持續受到矚目，該計畫將巴黎市區持續延伸，納入更多巴黎郊區。

行政機關

巴黎是法國的首都，也是中央政府的所在地。法國總統的官邸愛麗舍宮位於巴黎第八區，法國總理的官邸馬提尼翁府則位於巴黎第七區。其他政府機構則散佈在市區各處，其中許多機關都位在巴黎第七區，靠近馬提尼翁府。

法國兩個國會都位在塞納河左岸，盧森堡宮是上議院法國參議院的所在地，位於巴黎第六區的盧森堡公園內，而下議院法國國民議會則位於巴黎塞納河畔的波旁宮。

法國最高法院也設置在巴黎市區，翻案法院是法國是民事和刑事案件的最終上訴法院，位於西堤島上的司法宮（Palais de Justice）。國務委員會則位於巴黎皇家宮殿內部。

市政府

巴黎在法國大革命期間（1790年至1795年）被歸類為市鎮，並從1834年起再度被分類市鎮，當時規模只有目前的一半。巴黎從1860年開始擴張城市範圍，並以順時針方向分別劃分成20個區。

法國政府在1790年設立塞納省，巴黎為其轄區。後來塞納省在1968年撤銷，拆分為巴黎省（1市鎮）、上塞納省（27市鎮）、塞納-聖但尼省（24市鎮）和瓦勒德馬恩省（29市鎮）。20個區都擁有一個直選議會，負責選出該區的區長。這些區長有些則會成為巴黎議會（conseil de Paris）的成員，並選出巴黎市長。

大區

巴黎後來被劃分為一個更大的行政區域，這個行政區域被稱為大區。後來這個大區在1976年被改稱為法蘭西島，範圍包含巴黎與鄰近7個省份。巴黎省的行政長官同時也是法蘭西島大區的行政長官。

文化

娛樂

巴黎最大的歌劇院分別是19世紀建造的巴黎歌劇院與法國總統弗朗索瓦·密特朗任內建造的巴士底歌劇院。巴黎在19世紀中葉就已經擁有2座歌劇院，分別是法國喜歌劇院（Opera Comique）與國家歌劇院（Théâtre Lyrique）。許多法國著名歌手都曾經在音樂廳演出，例如墨利斯·雪佛萊（Maurice Chevalier）、喬治·布拉森斯（Georges Brassens）、查爾斯·阿茲納吾爾（Charles Aznavour）與艾迪特·皮雅芙。巴黎每年都會舉辦一些慶典，例如塞納河搖滾節。

電影

許多巴黎電影對世界各地產生巨大影響，許多著名導演對於法國電影發展產生巨大影響，例如尚盧·高達、克勞德·雷路許（Claude Lelouch）、法蘭索瓦·杜魯福、克勞德·夏布洛與呂克·貝松等。巴黎也擁有十分巨大的電影院網路，因為許多舞廳與音樂廳從1930年代開始改建成電影院。

許多著名電影也在巴黎拍攝或以巴黎為故事背景，例如美國導演伍迪·艾倫執導的《午夜巴黎》、澳大利亞導演巴茲·雷曼執導的《紅磨坊》、羅恩·霍華德執導的《達文西密碼》與奧黛莉·朵杜主演的《艾蜜莉的異想世界》。皮克斯動畫工作室製作的動畫電影《料理鼠王》也以巴黎為故事背景。

觀光

自從1848年開始，巴黎就逐漸成為法國鐵路網的中心。艾菲爾鐵塔於1889年世界博覽會完工後，法國成為國際矚目的焦點之一。每年有2,800萬人造訪巴黎市（巴黎都會區則有4,200萬人），其中包括1,700萬名國際觀光客，也讓巴黎成為世界上最多觀光客造訪的城市。博物館與紀念性建築都吸引許多觀光客造訪，羅浮宮每年可以吸引超過800萬人參觀，是世界上最多觀光客造訪的藝術博物館。教堂也是巴黎著名景點之一，聖母院與聖心堂每年分別可以吸引1,200萬與800萬人次造訪。艾菲爾鐵塔每年可以吸引超過600萬人次造訪，自從開幕以來已經有2億人次參觀。巴黎迪士尼樂園也吸引世界各地的觀光客前往，每年可以吸引1,450萬人次造訪。凡爾賽宮位於法國巴黎西南郊外伊夫林省省會凡爾賽鎮，從1682年至1789年之間曾是法國的王宮，並於1979年被列為世界文化遺產。

羅浮宮是世界上最大與最著名的博物館之一，展出許多著名藝術品，包括蒙娜麗莎、斷臂維納斯與薩莫特拉斯的勝利女神。羅丹美術館與分別展出西班牙畫家巴勃羅·畢卡索與雕刻家奧古斯特·羅丹的作品。法國國立現代藝術美術館（Musée National d'Art Moderne）位於龐畢度中心的內部，展出許多現代藝術品。

克魯尼美術館（Musée de Cluny）與奧賽博物館則分別展出中世紀與印象派畫家作品，包括《情人與獨角獸》（The Lady and the Unicorn）、《煎餅磨坊的舞會》、《隆河上的星夜》與《拾穗》等著名藝術品。麗都（Le Lido）的舞孃表演與紅磨坊的康康舞也都吸引許多觀光客前往。蒙馬特區位於十八區，名稱來自蒙馬特山丘，以歷史悠久的教堂及夜店、酒店、俱樂部聞名。山頂上的聖心堂是巴黎北部著名的地標，1914年建造完成，也是該市的天主教宗座聖殿，整體建築風格有濃厚的羅馬拜占庭色彩。

2014年美國全球語言觀察機構（GLM）公布最新調查指出，根據過去三年透過字詞使用分析趨勢，巴黎排名落後紐約，成為全球排名第二的時尚城市。

2014年3月大巴黎區地方旅遊委員會（Île-de-France Regional Tourism Committee）根據旅館住房率統計，2013年近1550萬外國遊客造訪巴黎，巴黎再度榮登2013年全球旅遊目的地首選。

體育

巴黎著名體育運動隊包括職業足球隊巴黎聖日耳門足球會、職業籃球隊（Paris-Levallois Basket）與職業橄欖球隊法蘭西斯隊（Stade Français）。法蘭西體育場（Stade de France）位於法國巴黎市郊的聖丹尼，可容納8萬名觀眾。法蘭西體育場是為1998年世界盃足球賽而興建的，並曾作為1998年世界盃決賽舉行場地。法蘭西體育場也是一個多種用途的大型運動場地，也可以提供橄欖球與田徑比賽來使用。法國國家橄欖球隊、法國國家足球隊與六國錦標賽都在這個運動場進行比賽。除了職業足球隊巴黎聖日耳曼足球俱樂部外，巴黎還擁有巴黎足球俱樂部、紅星足球俱樂部、RCF 巴黎隊與法蘭西斯巴黎隊（Stade Français Paris）等業餘足球隊。巴黎聖日耳門在90年代中期曾經是一直強隊，近年來有下滑的趨勢。朗拿甸奴在加盟巴塞羅那隊之前就效力於該隊。2007年該隊成績達到低谷，甚至面臨著歷史上第一次降級的危險。

巴黎目前在職業橄欖球聯盟Top 14擁有兩支隊伍，分別是法蘭西斯隊與Racing Métro 92。巴黎分別在1900年和1924年兩度成功舉辦奧林匹克運動會，並將於2024年三度舉辦奧運會，也在1938年與1998年兩度成功舉辦世界盃足球賽，2007年世界盃橄欖球賽也在巴黎舉行。2006年歐洲聯賽冠軍盃決賽也在巴黎法蘭西體育場舉行，冠軍是西班牙足球勁旅巴塞隆納足球會。

環法自由車賽是公路自由車運動中規模最大、影響最廣的國際自由車大賽，終點站也設置在巴黎。從1975年開始，環法自由車賽的終點都是在凱旋門。網球在巴黎與法國也相當盛行，法國公開賽是四大滿貫賽之一，也是唯一一個紅土賽事。法國公開賽每年都在布洛涅森林附近的羅蘭·加洛斯球場舉行。

供水與衛生系統

巴黎早期的歷史僅限於塞納河與那慕爾河（Bièvre）周圍。後來羅馬人在1世紀時將輸水管從南方連接巴黎地區，11世紀時則從右岸山丘建造輸水管至巴黎地區。羅瑞克運河（Canal de l'Ourcq）從1809年提供巴黎地區比較乾淨的用水。巴黎從19世紀晚期才首次獲得豐富且穩定的飲用水來源。

厄熱·貝爾格朗（Eugène Belgrand）擔任巴黎行政長官喬治·歐仁·奧斯曼（Georges Eugène Haussmann）男爵巴黎都市改造計畫的總工程師，建造了一系列巴黎供水系統。從那個時候開始，一個嶄新的蓄水池系統成為巴黎地區的飲用水來源，而老舊系統則用來清洗巴黎的街道。這個系統仍然是目前巴黎供水系統網路的一部分，而巴黎的下水道長度超過2,400公里。

在1982年，當時的巴黎市長雅各·席哈克引進一種特殊機車來清理街道上的狗糞便。巴黎後來在2002年停止此項作法，改為對狗主人開出最高500歐元的罰款。這項改革是因為使用這種特殊機車只能清理巴黎街道上20%的狗糞便，但是每年卻需要花費300萬歐元。

城市景觀

規劃

巴黎不像倫敦曾經被1666年倫敦大火所摧毀，或里斯本被1755年里斯本大地震破壞，巴黎在自中世紀以來的發展中，一面保留了過去的印記，甚至是歷史最悠久的某些街道的布局，一面形成了統一的風格，並且實現了現代化的基礎設施。

當代巴黎的大部分城市面貌是19世紀中葉法蘭西第二帝國時期奧斯曼男爵對巴黎進行大規模城市改造的結果。在許多世紀中，該市一直是迷宮般的狹窄街道和半木架房屋，但是從1852年開始，奧斯曼男爵的大規模都市計劃，使得整片整片的區域讓位給寬闊大道兩側的新古典主義的中產階級石砌建築；大部分的「新」巴黎就是今天看到的巴黎。今日受歡迎的聖日耳曼大道、塞瓦斯托波爾大道等都在那時開闢。巴黎經常用作「對齊」（alignement）法規的同義詞，沿著林蔭大道兩側，預先確定的街道寬度，確定外牆位置，然後修建同樣高度的建築物，大樓的高度根據所面臨街道的寬度界定。建築物外立面富于韻律，設計了二樓陽台和五樓的裝飾。

長期以來，巴黎一直遵守嚴格的城市規劃，特別是限制建築物的高度。法蘭西第二帝國的規劃在許多情況下今天仍然適用。今天，對于高度超過37米的新建樓宇只在特殊的例外情形下才會被允許，而在許多地區，對于高度的限制甚至更低。1973年修建的蒙帕納斯大樓曾經是法國的最高建築，不過這個局面逐漸發生改變，拉德芳斯區的摩天大樓將成倍增加：Tour AXA將達到225公尺，但是又將會被300公尺高的Tour Phare和318公尺高的Tour Generali超過，當它完成時將成為西歐的最高建築物。

道路

巴黎市共有6088條公共或私人道路（1997年）。其中最寬的道路是十六區的福煦大街，寬達120公尺，第八區的Selves大街（Avenue de Selves）是巴黎最短的道路，全長只有110公尺，而沃日拉爾路則是巴黎最長的街道，橫跨第六區和十五區，全長4360公尺。第二區的角度街（Rue des Degrés）是巴黎最短的街道，只有5.75公尺；而第五區的貓釣魚街（Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche）為巴黎最窄的正式街道，寬1.8公尺（雖然有些資料來源顯示，十二區的Sentier des Merisiers不足1公尺寬，而二十區的Passage de la Duée，雖然右邊現在被毀，周圍有柵欄，經過測量後發現只有80公分寬。最後，巴黎最陡峭的道路是二十區的Rue Gasnier-Guy，斜率達到17 ％。

建築

巴黎的許多重要機構都設在城市邊界以外，包括拉德芳斯金融商務區、主要糧食批發市場（Rungis）、巴黎綜合理工學院、巴黎高等商業研究學院（HEC）、高等經濟商業學院（ESSEC）、ESCP歐洲商學院、歐洲工商管理學院、世界著名的研究實驗室（位在薩克雷和埃夫利）、最大的體育場（法蘭西體育場）以及交通部都位于城市的郊區。

巴黎市

• 巴士底廣場（第4、第11和第12區，右岸）是一個不僅對巴黎，而且對整個法國都具有重要的歷史意義的地區，由于其歷史價值，廣場常常被用于政治示威，其中包括2006年3月大規模的勞工抗議。

• 香榭麗舍大街（第8區，右岸) 連接協和廣場和凱旋門，由17世紀花園式散步道改建的大道。它是巴黎的眾多旅遊景點之一和主要的購物街。

• 協和廣場 （第8區，右岸）位于香榭麗舍大街東端, 初建時稱為「路易十五廣場」，臭名昭著的斷頭台的地點。埃及方尖碑是巴黎「最古老的古蹟」。廣場上，皇家路的兩側，有兩座相同的石頭建築：東面的一座是法國海軍部，西面的一座是豪華的克里雍大飯店（Hôtel de Crillon）。附近的旺多姆廣場以時尚和豪華酒店著稱，擁有巴黎里茲酒店（Hôtel Ritz）和旺多姆大飯店（Hôtel de Vendôme）及其珠寶店，許多著名時裝設計師在廣場上擁有他們的沙龍。

• 巴黎大堂（第1區，右岸）過去是巴黎的中央肉類產品市場，自1970年代後期以來，在歐洲最大的地鐵聯絡站（Châtelet - Les Halles）周圍形成主要購物中心。從前的商場已經在1971年拆除，代之以大堂廣場（Forum des Halles）。現在的中央市場位于南郊的Rungis。

• 沼澤區是右岸的一個著名區域（第3和第4區），也是一個在文化方面非常開放的區域。

• 蒙田大街 （第八區）毗鄰香榭麗舍大街，奢侈品牌聚集地，包括香奈兒、路易威登、克里斯汀·迪奧 和紀梵希（Givenchy）。

• 蒙馬特（第18區，右岸）在歷史上經常是藝術家聚集的區域，在這個區域有許多藝術家工作室和咖啡館，聖心聖殿位於此區。

• 蒙帕納斯 （第14區）是左岸一個歷史性地區，以藝術家工作室、音樂廳和咖啡館生活著稱。這裡有巨大的蒙帕納斯-比耶維紐地鐵 站和摩天大樓 蒙帕納斯大樓。

• 歌劇院大街 （第9區，右岸）是巴黎歌劇院的周圍地區，也是巴黎百貨公司和寫字樓最密集的地區，包括春天百貨、巴黎老佛爺百貨公司以及金融巨頭里昂信貸銀行和美國運通銀行巴黎總部。

名勝古蹟

巴黎三個最有名的地標分別是：西岱島上12世紀的主教座堂巴黎聖母院、拿破崙一世興建的凱旋門，和19世紀的艾菲爾鐵塔。艾菲爾鐵塔是一座「臨時」建築，由 居斯塔夫·埃菲爾為1889年世界博覽會而建，此後一直沒有拆除，現在成了巴黎的一個持久象徵。巴黎的歷史軸是一條從市中心筆直向西的直線，由文物古蹟、建築、街道組成，這條軸線的東端開始于盧浮宮，然後經過杜樂麗花園、協和廣場、香榭麗舍大街，到達戴高樂廣場中央的凱旋門。20世紀60年代以後，軸線繼續向西延伸到拉德芳斯商務區，其核心是方形的拉德芳斯區新凱旋門；這一區域擁有巴黎都市區大多數的摩天大樓。榮軍院博物館埋葬了許多偉大的法國軍人，其中包括拿破崙，而萬神殿教堂是許多法國傑出男女的安葬地點。一些「舊政權」著名成員在法國大革命期間死亡之前，曾被關押在昔日的司法大廈（Conciergerie）古監獄。另一個革命的標誌物是位于塞納河上的天鵝島（Île des Cygnes）和盧森堡公園的兩尊自由女神像。較大的雕像于1886年被作為禮物送往美國，目前安置在紐約市的港口。巴黎歌劇院興建于第二帝國後期，駐有巴黎歌劇院芭蕾舞團，而從前的盧浮宮 現在是全世界最著名的博物館之一。索邦大學是巴黎大學最著名的部分，坐落在拉丁區的中心。在巴黎聖母院之外，其他的教堂建築傑作包括13世紀哥特式的宮廷教堂聖禮拜堂和馬德萊娜教堂。1991年巴黎塞納河沿岸眾多的名勝古蹟被一起列入世界遺產名錄。

• 旅遊景點：

　• 艾菲爾鐵塔（La Tour Eiffel）

　• 巴黎凱旋門（Arc de triomphe de l'Étoile）

　• 巴黎歌劇院（Le Palais Garnier，或又稱L'Opéra Garnier）（zh-hans:加尼埃宮; zh-hant:加尼葉歌劇院;）

　• 聖心聖殿（又名「聖心堂」；Le Sacré-Cœur）

　• 巴黎聖母院（Notre-Dame de Paris）

　• 巴黎市政廳（Hôtel de Ville）

　• 盧森堡公園（Jardin du Luxembourg）（法國參議院（Senat）所在地）

　• 波旁宮（Palais Bourbon）（法國國民議會所在地）

• 博物館和展覽館

　• 羅浮宮（Musée du Louvre）（遠古和古代藝術）

　• 奧塞美術館（Musée d'Orsay）（近代藝術）

　• 龐比度中心（Centre Georges Pompidou）（現代藝術）

　• 巴黎格雷萬蠟像館（Musée Grevin）

　• 羅丹美術館（Musée Rodin）

　• 畢加索博物館（Musée Picasso）

　• 巴黎達利蒙馬特空間（L'Espace Dali）（超現實主義藝術）

　• 克呂尼博物館（L'Hôtel de Cluny）

　• 蒙帕納斯博物館（Musée du Montparnasse）

　• 大皇宮（Le Grand Palais）（1900年世界博覽會展館）

　• 小皇宮（Le Petit Palais）（1900年世界博覽會展館）

　• 夏佑宮（Palais de Chaillot）（1937年世界博覽會展館）

• 街道、廣場

　• 里沃利路（Rue de Rivoli）

　• 巴黎塞納河左岸（Rive gauche）

　• 孚日廣場（Place des Vosges）

　• 亞歷山大三世橋（Pont Alexandre III）

　• 新橋（Pont Neuf）

　• 拉雪茲神父公墓（Cimetière du Père Lachaise）

　• 左岸咖啡（les cafés de la Rive gauche）

• 夜生活

　• 紅磨坊夜總會（Bal du Moulin Rouge）

　• 蒙馬特高地（Montmartre）

　• 瘋馬（Crazy horse）

　• 拉丁天堂

• 大巴黎地區

　• 凡爾賽宮（Château de Versailles）

　• 楓丹白露宮（Château de Fontainebleau）

　• 巴黎迪士尼樂園度假區（Disneyland Resort Paris）

教育

在9世紀時，查理曼命令所有的教堂對自己管轄的教區教授基礎數學、閱讀與書寫，而座堂則進一步教導語言的藝術、物理學、音樂與神學。巴黎在當時已經是主要的宗教中心，並開始成為學術中心。到了13世紀初，巴黎聖母院學校已經擁有許多著名的教師。另外有些人則1257年在聖女日南斐法山丘（Montagne Sainte-Geneviève）上成立索邦大學。

在12世紀後期，法蘭西島大區已經有330,000人從事教育工作，其中有170,000名教師與教授教導290萬名孩童，並有9,000所學校與教育機構。

根據2004年至2005年的資料顯示，巴黎目前有17所大學，並有359,749名學生，是歐洲大學生最集中的區域。巴黎的大學校及擁有大學同等學位的私人與公立學校則有240,778名在籍學生。所以巴黎的高等教育學生總共有600,527名。

高等學院預備班（classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles,CPGE）通常為期二或三年，學生在完成學業後可以有機會進入大學校就讀。許多優秀的大學校都位在巴黎，包括路易大帝中學（Lycée Louis le Grand）、亨利四世中學（Lycée Henri IV）、聖路易高中（Lycée Saint-Louis）、詹森薩伊中學（Lycée Janson de Sailly）與斯坦尼斯勞斯高中（Lycée Stanislas）。

大學

在巴黎大學（Université de Paris）於12世紀成立之前，巴黎聖母院是巴黎的高等教育中心。卡佩王朝國王腓力二世 (法蘭西)在1200年創造了「大學」（universitas）一詞，認為大學是一個聚集教師與學生的團體，而且有權利獨立運作，不受國王法律與稅法幹擾的組織。

到了13世紀時，已經相當著名的巴黎大學吸引來自歐洲各地的學生。巴黎左岸的經院哲學中心（後來被稱為拉丁區）重新聚集在1257年成立的索邦大學周圍。19世紀的巴黎大學已經擁有六種學科組織：法律、科學、藥學、醫學、文學與神學。

1968年春天的五月風暴讓巴黎大學的組織型態持續改革，並逐漸分散其集中化的學術主體。巴黎大學後來在1971年拆分成13所大學，分散在市區與郊區各地。每一所新的大學（巴黎第一大學、巴黎第二大學、巴黎第三大學、巴黎第四大學、巴黎第五大學、巴黎第六大學、巴黎第七大學、巴黎第八大學、巴黎第九大學、巴黎第十大學、巴黎第十一大學、巴黎第十二大學與巴黎第十三大學）都只保有舊巴黎大學的一小部分。

1991年，四所新大學成立於巴黎郊區，於是法蘭西島大區總共有17所大學。這四所新設立的大學分別是賽爾齊—蓬多瓦茲大學（Université de Cergy-Pontoise）、埃夫利-瓦爾岱索納大學（Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne）、馬恩河谷大學（Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée）與聖康丁昂伊夫利納-凡爾賽大學（Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines）。

圖書館

法國國家圖書館是法國的國家圖書館，也是法國最重要的圖書館之一。其他位於巴黎的圖書館還有密特朗圖書館（François-Mitterrand Library）、黎塞留圖書館（Richelieu Library）、盧瓦圖書館（Louvois）、歌劇院圖書館（Opéra Library）與阿森納圖書館（Arsenal Library）。

美國圖書館於1920年開幕，屬於一個私人且非營利性質的組織。當代圖書館收藏的書籍是由美國圖書館協會送給居住在法國境內的美國士兵所構成的，前身在1850年代就已經出現。

列表

;以下列出巴黎著名大學與高等學院：

• 巴黎大學（Université de Paris）：歷史悠久的綜合性大學，1971年拆分成13所大學

　• 巴黎第一大學（）

　• 巴黎第二大學（)

　• 巴黎第三大學（）

　• 巴黎第四大學（）

　• 巴黎第五大學（）

　• 巴黎第六大學（）

　• 巴黎第七大學（Université Paris Diderot）

　• 巴黎第八大學（Université Vincennes-Saint-Denis）

　• 巴黎第九大學（Université Paris Dauphine）

　• 巴黎第十大學（Université Nanterre）

　• 巴黎第十一大學（Université Paris Sud）

　• 巴黎第十二大學（Université Val de Marne）

　• 巴黎第十三大學（Université Paris Nord）

• 大學校（Grandes Écoles）:

　• 巴黎高等師範學校（École normale supérieure de Paris, ENS）

　• 巴黎政治學院（Institut d'Études Politique de Paris, Sciences Po）

　• 國家行政學院（）

　• 巴黎綜合理工學院（École Polytechnique），通常簡稱X，位于巴黎遠郊。實行準軍事化教育，全法頂尖的工程師和軍事學院。

　• 國立巴黎高等礦業學校（École des Mines de Paris）

　• 巴黎中央理工學院（École Centrale de Paris）

　• 高等電力學院（École Supérieure d'électricité）

　• 法國國立東方語言文化學院（Inalco），舊稱Langues』O，包含119種外國語言及文學課程，法國國家外語語種最全外語文化學院。

　• 國立巴黎高等化學學院（École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris），簡稱ENSCP（或者Chimie Paris），位于巴黎第5區居里夫婦街。法國最好的化學學院。

　• 巴黎高等物理化工學院（École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris），簡稱ESPCI。法國最好的物理化學學院,居里夫婦在這裡發現了鐳。

　• 國立高等石油和發動機學院（École Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs），簡稱ENSPM。位于巴黎郊區Rueil-Malmaison（拿破崙·約瑟芬的宮殿所在地）。下屬于法國石油研究院（Institut Français de Pétrole，簡稱IFP），通常只招收外國本科以上、或者法國工程師學院畢業的工程師學生，實行面向石油行業和汽車行業的職業技能培訓。

　• 國立高等先進技術學院 (ENSTA, École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées)

　• 國立橋路學校（ENPC,École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées）

　• 法國國立高等電信學校（ENST,École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications）巴黎高科電信學院（Télécom ParisTech）是一所法國知名公立工程師學校。建立于1878年，該校在法國信息及通信領域享有盛譽。

　• 高等工程技術學院（École nationale supérieure des Arts et Métiers)

　• 巴黎高等商業研究學院（HEC）

　• ESCP歐洲商學院（ESCP-EAP）

　• 社會科學高等學院（EHESS）

　• 高等研究應用學院（EPHE）

　• 行政與管理預備學院（IPAG）

• 藝術學院

　• 國立美術學院，俗稱巴黎美院（les Beaux-Arts de Paris），簡稱ENSBA，前巴黎皇家美術學院。

　• 國家高等裝潢藝術學院（École nationale supérieure d'art décorative），世界應用藝術最傑出的學校之一，簡稱ENSAD。也是雕刻家羅丹（Rodin）所畢業的學校。

　• GOBELINS圖像學院（GOBELINS école d'image），位于巴黎市第13區，並在諾瓦齊（Noisy）有一校園。它是屬于巴黎工商會（CCIP）的眾多學校之一。

　• 巴黎國立高等音樂舞蹈學院（Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris）

社會

巴黎西部是法國最富裕的地區，許多上流社會人士都居住在這裡，就像紐約的上東城、洛杉磯市的比佛利山或倫敦的梅費爾等地。巴黎西部大致是以巴黎的歷史軸為中心，沿途有羅浮宮、杜樂麗花園、協和廣場、戴高樂廣場一直通到塞納河畔訥伊。法國作家巴爾扎克的巨著《人間喜劇》與法國作家馬塞爾·普魯斯特的《追憶逝水年華》也都對巴黎西區的居民有許多描述。

在法國歷史上，巴黎西區對於法國的文化、經濟與社會都有指標性的地位 。巴黎西區並不只是一個地理名詞，也是一種社會現象，代表法國上流社會人士的生活方式與習慣。

左岸通常指巴黎在塞納河左岸的部分，具有濃厚的文化或意識形態意味，有許多的學院及文化教育機構聚集在此。右岸通常是指塞納河流經巴黎市區河段的右岸，現在可以用來指在波希米亞的左岸所不具有的優雅的水平和複雜的程度。右岸最著名的街道包括香榭麗舍大街（Champs-Élysées）、和平街（Rue de la Paix）、里窩利街（Rue de Rivoli）和蒙田大街（Avenue Montaigne）。

交通

巴黎是塞納河重要貨運與客運中心，也是法國第四大港口，僅次於馬賽、勒阿弗爾與敦克爾克。巴黎也是法國主要的高速公路、鐵路與航空運輸中心。巴黎目前有兩個國際機場：位於巴黎東北方的夏爾·戴高樂國際機場以及南方的奧利機場（Aeroport de Paris-Orly）。

巴黎的交通網路十分龐大，而且持續發展進步當中。法蘭西島運輸聯合會（Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-

France）負責法蘭西島各種交通運輸系統。

巴黎地鐵是巴黎市內交通的主力軍，開幕於1900年，總共有14條主線、2條支線，地鐵站遍佈市內，共有300個車站，總長度為214公里。其中最新建成的14號線非常現代化，是一條全自動無人駕駛的線路。巴黎市內的zh-hans:公交線路;zh-hk:巴士路線;zh-tw:公車路線;則有五十餘條。連接市區與法蘭西島其他地區的交通服務則由1960年代開張的區域快鐵（）和遠郊鐵路（Transilien）來負責，其中區域快鐵亦貫穿巴黎市內。巴黎市區的四周還圍著4條有軌電車線路（Tramway）：巴黎路面電車1號線（聖德尼至努瓦西勒塞克）、巴黎路面電車2號線（拉德芳斯商業區至凡爾賽門）、巴黎路面電車3號線（加利格里亞諾橋至伊夫里門）與巴黎路面電車4號線（奧奈叢林至邦迪），目前也有6條路線正在計劃當中。

巴黎水上巴士于2008年開通，是巴黎塞納河和馬恩河上的水上運輸服務，連接巴黎市區東南方的奧斯特里茨車站和東南郊的阿福居（Maisons-Alfort）。

巴黎是法國的鐵路中心，故旅客從此前往法國各地極為方便。巴黎目前有7個鐵路車站，分別是巴黎北站、巴黎聖拉扎爾車站、巴黎里昂車站、巴黎蒙帕納斯車站、巴黎東站、巴黎貝爾西站與巴黎奧斯特里茨車站，並提供法國高速列車、Corail與法蘭西島區域鐵路等服務。法國國家鐵路公司目前已經建成多條高速鐵路線（TGV）連接巴黎與其他地區，從巴黎前往里昂只需2小時，抵達馬賽需要3小時。2007年4月巴黎與斯特拉斯堡之間的TGV也部分通車。

從巴黎乘坐高速鐵路前往其他歐洲國家也很方便。例如從巴黎開往比利時的布魯塞爾高速火車（大力士高速列車）每天會從巴黎北站開出25班，行車時間僅為1小時22分鐘。而從巴黎開往阿姆斯特丹的火車則每日開出約八班，行車時間為4小時13分；巴黎來往科隆的列車班次則每天六班，車行時間為3小時50分。

巴黎目前也提供「Vélib'」城市單車自由租用計劃，在1,450個單車站準備超過20,000輛單車提供遊客使用。巴黎也是法國最重要的高速公路網路中心，三條環狀高速公路圍繞在巴黎四周。環城大道興建於1970年代初期，完成於1973年4月25日，也是巴黎市區（約200萬居民）和郊區（超過1200萬居民）之間被普遍接受的分界線，因為它的大部分路段是沿著巴黎市的行政邊界建造。A86高速公路，又稱巴黎超級環城大道，是巴黎第二條繞城道路，以市中心的巴黎聖母院為起點。杜弗羅德高速公路（Francilienne）是巴黎第三條繞城道路，環繞巴黎外側的市區。

城市交流

巴黎與許多世界各地的城市都有頻繁的接觸 ，但是巴黎只有一個友好城市，就是義大利首都羅馬市，就像一句格言所說的一樣「只有巴黎配得上羅馬，只有羅馬配得上巴黎」。

夥伴城市