History of Paris
The name of the city comes from the name of a Gallic tribe (parisis) inhabiting the region at the time of the Roman conquest. The historical heart of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small island now largely occupied by the huge Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. It is connected with the smaller Île Saint-Louis (another island) occupied by elegant houses built in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Paris was occupied by a Gallic tribe until the Romans arrived in 52 BC. The invaders referred to the previous occupants as the Parisii, but called their new city Lutetia, meaning "marshy place". About 50 years later the city had spread to the left bank of the Seine, now known as the Latin Quarter, and was renamed "Paris".
Roman rule had ceased by 508, when Clovis the Frank made the city the capital of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks. In 511, he commissioned the building of the cathedral of St.Etienne on the Île. Viking invasions during the 800s forced the Parisians to build a fortress on the Île de la Cité. On March 28, 845 Paris was sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collected a huge ransom in exchange for leaving. The weakness of the late Carolingian kings of France led to the gradual rise in power of the Counts of Paris; Odo, Count of Paris was elected king of France by feudal lords while Charles III was also claiming the throne. Finally, in 987 Hugh Capet, count of Paris, was elected king of France by the great feudal lords after the last Carolingian king died.
During the 11th century the city spread to the Right Bank. In the 12th and 13th centuries, which included the reign of Philip II Augustus (1180 to 1223), the city grew strongly. Main thoroughfares were paved, the first Louvre was built as a fortress, and several churches, including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, were constructed or begun. Several schools on the Left Bank were grouped together into the Sorbonne, which counts Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas among its early scholars. In the Middle Ages, Paris prospered as a trading and intellectual nucleus, interrupted temporarily when the Black Death struck in the 14th century, and again in the 15th century when urban revolts drove the royal court to abandon the city for almost 100 years. Under the reign of King Louis XIV, the Sun King, from 1643 to 1715, the royal residence was moved from Paris to nearby Versailles.
Storming of the Bastille by a Parisian mob on July 14, 1789
The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Many of the conflicts in the next few years were between Paris and the outlying rural areas.
The establishment of the French Second Empire in 1852 marked a turning point in the history of Paris, with Emperor Napoleon III, influenced by the modernisation of London he had witnessed during his exile there in the 1840s, launching a complete overhaul of Paris. From the 1850s until 1914, Paris experienced the largest development in its history. The famous Parisian Haussmann Style dates back to this period, during which much of the Paris known today was planned and constructed.
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War ended in a siege of Paris, followed by the Paris Commune. It surrendered in 1871 after a winter of famine and bloodshed.
Due to French economic prosperity, Paris rapidly recovered after 1871. The recovery was marked by the World's Fair of 1878 and above all the World's Fair of 1889, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, on which occasion was built the Eiffel Tower, the best-known landmark in Paris and tallest structure in the world until 1930. The 1890s and 1900s saw a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic development known as La Belle Époque (The Beautiful period). In 1900 Paris hosted the 1900 Summer Olympics and organized the 1900 World's Fair, the largest world's fair on records, which attracted millions of people from all around the world. On this occasion the first line of the Paris Métro was completed. The large scale display of electricity and light bulbs at the world's fairs of 1889 and 1900, which was a first in the world, earned Paris the nickname "City of Lights".
During World War I, Paris was at the forefront of the war effort, having been spared invasion by the German Army due to the French and English victory at the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. In 1918 the city experienced the victory celebrations mixing troops from all allied powers. In 1919 Paris hosted the delegations from all belligerent powers negotiating the peace treaties ending the war, with US President Woodrow Wilson receiving a particularly enthusiastic welcome from Parisians.
After the war, due to its status as the capital of a victorious country, Paris attracted people from all around the world, ushering into the Interwar period, during which Paris was famed for its cultural and artistic life, as well as its nightlife. From Russian exiled artists fleeing the Bolsheviks (such as composer Igor Stravinsky), to Spanish painters (such as Picasso or Dalí), to US writers (such as Hemingway), Paris became a melting pot of artists from all around the world. In 1924 Paris hosted the Olympic Games for the second time (1924 Summer Olympics). In 1927 Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris to the delirious welcome of huge Parisian crowds, completing the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The 1931 International Colonial Exhibition, the largest such colonial exhibition in history, was a display of French imperial power, while the 1937 World's Fair renewed with the successes of the world's fairs of the Belle Époque and pitted Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, competing for the prestige of their regimes in the heart of Paris.
At the start of World War II in September 1939, part of the 6 million inhabitants of Paris and its suburbs were evacuated, while public buildings and monuments were protected by sandbags, and lights were turned off at night. In June 1940, five weeks after the start of the German attack on France, Paris fell to German occupation forces, which remained there until late-August 1944. After the battle of Normandy, Paris was liberated when the German general Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered after skirmishes to the French 2nd Armoured Division commanded by Philippe de Hauteclocque backed by the Allies. Paris was fortunate to be the only large city of Europe (neutral countries excluded) that suffered almost no destruction from the war, preserving its 19th century architecture intact.
In the post-war period Paris experienced its largest development since the end of the Belle Époque in 1914. The suburbs around the city proper (commune) of Paris expanded manifold, with the construction of large social estates known as cités, as well as the building of a grid of freeways/motorways linking all parts of the suburbs. The business district of La Défense was also started, with its distinct skyline of skyscrapers.
In the late-1960s, the Tour Montparnasse, a large, modern skyscraper, was constructed just south of the Jardin du Luxembourg. It is starkly out of place in its neighbourhood and ruined many of Haussmann's carefully planned vistas; as such it was one of the most immediate causes for the changes in zoning and administrative rules that now keep all urban development outside the city limits (principally confining skyscrapers to La Défense).
Starting in the mid-1980s, there has been periodic unrest, sometimes degenerating into riots, in the poor immigrant neighbourhoods of the outer suburbs of Paris, especially in the cités built after the war and which have gradually turned into ghettos for poor immigrants. In the end of October and beginning of November 2005 there happened the most severe riots in the Paris suburbs on records, with thousands of cars and tens of public buildings and utilities burnt by young arsonists. Violent clashes between gangs of youth (mostly French citizens born of immigrant parents) and the police were reported.