History

In the Beginning

Paris emerged at the crossroads of three major traffic arteries on the muddy island in the Seine that today is known as Ile de la Cité.

By around 2000 B.C., the island served as the fortified headquarters of the Parisii tribe, who called it Lutétia. The two wooden bridges connecting the island to the river's left and right banks were among the regions most strategically important, and the settlement attracted the attention of the Roman Empire. In his Commentaries, Julius Caesar described his conquest of Lutétia, recounting how its bridges were burned during the Gallic War of 52 B.C. and how the town on the island was pillaged, sacked, and transformed into a Roman-controlled stronghold.

Within a century, Lutétia became a full-fledged Roman town, and some of the inhabitants abandoned the frequently flooded island in favor of higher ground on what is today the Left Bank. By A.D. 200, barbarian invasions threatened the stability of Roman Gaul, and the populace from the surrounding hills flocked to the island's fortified safety. During the next 50 years, a Christian community gained a foothold there. According to legend, St. Denis served as the city's first bishop (around 250). By this time the Roman Empire's political power had begun to wane in the region, and the cultural and religious attachment of the community to the Christian bishops of Rome grew even stronger.

During the 400s, with the decline of the Roman armies, Germanic tribes from the east (the Salian Franks) were able to invade the island, founding a Frankish dynasty and prompting a Frankish-Latin fusion in the burgeoning town. The first of these Frankish kings, Clovis (466-511), founder of the Merovingian dynasty, embraced Christianity as his tribe's religion and spearheaded an explicit rejection of Roman cultural imperialism by encouraging the adoption of Parisii place names such as "Paris," which came into common usage during this time.

The Merovingians were replaced by the Carolingians, whose heyday began with Charlemagne's coronation in 800. The Carolingian Empire sprawled over western Germany and eastern France, but Paris was never its capital. The city remained a commercial and religious center, sacred to the memory of St. Geneviève, who reputedly protected Paris when the Huns attacked it in the final days of the Roman Empire. The Carolingians came to an end in 987, when the empire fragmented because of the growing regional, political, and linguistic divisions between what would become modern France and modern Germany. Paris became the seat of a new dynasty, the Capetians, whose kings ruled France throughout the Middle Ages. Hugh Capet (938-96), the first of this line, ruled as comte de Paris and duc de France from 987 to 996.

The Middle Ages

Around 1100, Paris began to emerge as a great city, boasting on its Left Bank a university that attracted scholars from all over Europe. Meanwhile, kings and bishops began building the towering Gothic cathedrals of France, one of the greatest of which became Paris's Notre-Dame, a monument rising from the beating heart of the city. Paris's population increased greatly, as did the city's mercantile activity. During the 1200s, a frenzy of building transformed the skyline with convents and churches (including the jewel-like Sainte-Chapelle, completed in 1248, after just 2 years). During the next century, the increasingly powerful French kings added dozens of monuments of their own.

As time passed, Paris's fortunes became closely linked to the power struggles between the French monarchs in Paris and the various highly competitive feudal lords of the provinces. Because of this tug of war, Paris was dogged by civil unrest, takeovers by one warring faction after another, and a dangerous alliance between the English and the powerful rulers of Burgundy during the Hundred Years' War. Around the same time, the city suffered a series of plagues, including the Black Death. To the humiliation of the French monarchs, the English army invaded the city in 1422. Joan of Arc (ca. 1412-31) tried unsuccessfully to reconquer Paris in 1429, and 2 years later the English, supported by a tribunal of French ecclesiastics, burned her at the stake in Rouen. Paris was reduced to poverty and economic stagnation, and its embittered and greatly reduced population turned to banditry and street crime to survive.

Despite Joan's tragic end, the revolution she inspired continued until Paris was finally taken from the English in 1436. During the following several decades, the English retreated to the port of Calais, abandoning their once-mighty French territories. France, under the leadership of Louis XI (1423-83), witnessed an accelerating rate of change that included the transformation of a feudal and medieval social system into the nascent structure of a modern state.

The Renaissance & the Reformation

The first of the Renaissance monarchs, François I (1494-1547), began an enlargement of Paris's Louvre (which had begun as a warehouse storing the archives of Philippe Auguste before being transformed into a Gothic fortress by Louis IX in the 1100s) to make it suitable as a royal residence. Despite the building's embellishment and the designation of Paris as the French capital, he spent much of his time at other châteaux amid the hunting grounds of the Loire Valley. Many future monarchs came to share his opinion that Paris's narrow streets and teeming commercialism were unhealthy and chose to reside elsewhere.

In 1549, however, Henri II (1519-59) triumphantly established his court in Paris and successfully ruled France from within its borders, solidifying the city's role as the nation's undisputed capital. Following their ruler's lead, fashionable aristocrats quickly began to build hôtels particuliers (private residences) on the Right Bank, in a marshy low-lying area known as Le Marais (the swamp).

It was during this period that the Paris we know today came into existence. The expansion of the Louvre continued, and Catherine de Médici (1518-89) began building her Palais des Tuileries in 1564. From the shelter of dozens of elegant urban residences, France's aristocracy imbued Paris with its sense of architectural and social style, as well as the Renaissance's mores and manners. Stone quays were added to the Seine's banks, defining their limits and preventing future flood damage, and royal decrees established a series of building codes. To an increasing degree, Paris adopted the planned perspectives and visual grace worthy of the residence of a monarch.

During the late 1500s and 1600s, the French kings persecuted Protestants. The bloodletting reached a high point under Henri III (1551-89) during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. Henri III's tragic and eccentric successor, Henri IV (1553-1610), ended the Wars of Religion in 1598 by endorsing the Edict of Nantes, offering religious freedom to the Protestants of France. Henri IV also laid out the lines for one of Paris's memorable squares: place des Vosges. A deranged monk infuriated by the king's support of religious tolerance stabbed him to death in 1610.

After Henri IV's death, his second wife, Marie de Médici (1573-1642), acting as regent, planned the Palais du Luxembourg (1615), whose gardens have functioned ever since as a rendezvous point for Parisians. In 1636, Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), who virtually ruled France during the minority of Louis XIII, built the sprawling premises of the Palais Royal. Under Louis XIII (1601-43), two uninhabited islands in the Seine were joined with landfill, connected to Ile de la Cité and to the mainland with bridges, and renamed Ile St-Louis. Also laid out was the Jardin des Plantes, whose flowers and medicinal herbs were arranged according to their scientific and medical categories.

The Sun King & the French Revolution

Louis XIV (1638-1715) was crowned king of France when he was only 9 years old. Cardinal Mazarin (1602-61), Louis's Sicilian-born chief minister, dominated the government in Paris during the Sun King's minority. This era marked the emergence of the French kings as absolute monarchs. As if to concretize their power, they embellished Paris with many of the monuments that still serve as symbols of the city. These included new alterations to the Louvre and the construction of the pont Royal, quai Peletier, place des Victoires, place Vendôme, Champs-Elysées, and Hôtel des Invalides. Meanwhile, Louis XIV absented himself from the city, constructing, at a staggering expense, the Château de Versailles, 21km (13 miles) to the southwest. Today, the palace stands as the single most visible monument to the most flamboyant era of French history.

Meanwhile, the rising power of England, particularly its navy, represented a serious threat to France, otherwise the world's most powerful nation. One of the many theaters of the Anglo-French conflict was the American Revolution, during which the French kings supported the Americans in their struggle against the Crown. Ironically, within 15 years, the revolutionary fervor the monarchs had nurtured crossed the Atlantic and destroyed them. The spark that kindled the fire came from Paris itself. For years before the outbreak of hostilities between the Americans and the British, the Enlightenment and its philosophers had fostered a new generation of thinkers who opposed absolutism, religious fanaticism, and superstition. Revolution had been brewing for almost 50 years, and after the French Revolution's explosive events, Europe was completely changed.

Though it began with moderate aims, the Revolution had soon turned the radical Jacobins into overlords, led by Robespierre (1758-94). On August 10, 1792, troops from Marseilles, aided by a Parisian mob, threw Louis XVI (1754-93) and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette (1755-93), into prison. Several months later, after countless humiliations and a bogus trial, they were guillotined at place de la Révolution (later renamed place de la Concorde) on January 21, 1793. The Reign of Terror continued for another 18 months, with Parisians of all political persuasions fearing for their lives.

The Rise of Napoleon

It required the militaristic fervor of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) to unite France once again. Considered then and today a strategic genius with almost limitless ambition, he restored to Paris and France a national pride that had diminished during the Revolution's horror. After many impressive political and military victories, he entered Paris in 1799, at the age of 30, and crowned himself "First Consul and Master of France." In 1804, he named himself emperor of France.

A brilliant politician, Napoleon moderated the atheistic rigidity of the early adherents of the Revolution by establishing peace with the Vatican. Soon thereafter, the legendary love of Parisians for their amusements began to revive; boulevard des Italiens became the rendezvous point of the fashionable, while boulevard du Temple, which housed many of the capital's theaters, became the favorite watering hole of the working class. In his self-appointed role as a French Caesar, Napoleon continued to alter Paris's face with the construction of the neoclassical arcades of rue de Rivoli (1801), the Arc du Carrousel, and Arc de Triomphe, and the neoclassical grandeur of La Madeleine. On a less grandiose scale, the city's slaughterhouses and cemeteries were sanitized and moved away from the center of town, and new industries began to crowd workers from the countryside into the cramped slums of a newly industrialized Paris.

Napoleon's victories had made him the envy of Europe, but his infamous retreat from Moscow during the winter of 1812 reduced his formerly invincible army to tatters as 400,000 Frenchmen lost their lives. After a complicated series of events that included his return from exile, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo by the armies of the English, the Dutch, and the Prussians. Exiled to the British-held island of St. Helena in the remote South Atlantic, he died in 1821, possibly the victim of an unknown poisoner. Sometime later, his body was returned to Paris and interred in a massive porphyry sarcophagus in the Hôtel des Invalides, Louis XIV's monument to the ailing and fallen warriors of France.

In the power vacuum that followed Napoleon's expulsion and death, Paris became the scene of intense lobbying over France's future. The Bourbon monarchy was soon reestablished, but with reduced powers. In 1830, the regime was overthrown. Louis-Philippe (1773-1850), duc d'Orléans and the son of a duke who had voted in 1793 for the death of Louis XVI, was elected king under a liberalized constitution. His prosperous reign lasted for 18 years, during which England and France more or less collaborated on matters of foreign policy.

Paris reveled in its prosperity, grateful for the money and glamour that had elevated it to one of the world's top cultural and commercial centers. Paris opened its first railway line in 1837 and erected its first gas-fed streetlights shortly after. It was a time of wealth, grace, culture, and expansion, though the industrialization of certain working-class districts produced great poverty. The era also witnessed the development of French cuisine to the high form that still prevails, while a newly empowered bourgeoisie reveled in its attempts to create the good life.

The Second Empire

In 1848, a series of revolutions spread from one European capital to the next. The violent upheaval in Paris revealed the dissatisfaction of members of the working class. Fueled by a financial crash and scandals in the government, the revolt forced Louis-Philippe out. That year, Emperor Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III (1808-73), was elected president by moderate and conservative elements. Appealing to the property-owning instinct of a nation that hadn't forgotten the violent Revolution of less than a century before, he established a right-wing government and assumed complete power as emperor in 1851.

In 1853, Napoleon III undertook Europe's largest urban redevelopment project by commissioning Baron Eugène-Georges Haussmann (1809-91) to redesign Paris. Haussmann created a vast network of boulevards interconnected with a series of squares that cut across old neighborhoods. Although this reorganization gave the capital the look for which it's now famous, screams of outrage sounded throughout the neighborhoods split apart by construction. By 1866, the entrepreneurs of an increasingly industrialized Paris began to regard the Second Empire as a hindrance. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians defeated Napoleon III at Sedan and held him prisoner, along with 100,000 of his soldiers. Paris was threatened with bombardments from German cannons, by far the most advanced of their age, set up on the city's eastern periphery.

Although agitated diplomacy gained a Prussian withdrawal, international humiliation and perceived military incompetence sparked a revolt in Paris. One of the immediate effects was the burning of one of Paris's historic landmarks, the Palais des Tuileries. Today, only the gardens of this once-great palace remain. The events of 1870 ushered in the Third Republic and its elected president, Marshal Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon (1808-93), in 1873.

Under the Third Republic, peace and prosperity gradually returned, and Paris regained its glamour. Universal expositions held in 1878, 1889, 1900, and 1937 were catalysts for the construction of such enduring monuments as the Trocadéro, the Palais de Chaillot, the Tour Eiffel, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, and the neo-Byzantine Sacré-Coeur. The réseau métropolitain (the Métro) was constructed, providing a model for subway systems throughout Europe.

World War I

International rivalries and conflicting alliances led to World War I, which, after decisive German victories for 2 years, degenerated into the mud-slogged horror of trench warfare. Industrialization during and after the war transformed Paris and its environs into one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe, undisputed even today as the center of France's intellectual and commercial life.

Immediately after the Allied victory, grave economic problems, coupled with a populace demoralized from years of fighting, encouraged the rise of Socialism and the formation of a Communist party, both movements centered in Paris. Also from Paris, the French government, led by the vindictive Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), occupied Germany's Ruhr Valley -- then and now one of that country's most profitable and industrialized regions -- and demanded every centime of reparations it could wring from its humiliated neighbor, a policy that contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

The 1920's -- Americans in Paris

The so-called Lost Generation, led by American expatriates Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, topped the list of celebrities who "occupied" Paris after World War I, ushering in one of its most glamorous eras. The living was cheap in Paris. Two people could manage for about a year on a $1,000 scholarship, provided they could scrape up another $500 or so in extra earnings. Paris attracted the littérateur, bon viveur, and drifter. Such writers as Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all lived here. Even Cole Porter came, living first at the Ritz and then at 13 rue de Monsieur. James Joyce, half blind and led around by Ezra Pound, arrived in Paris and went to the salon of Natalie Barney. She became famous for pulling off such stunts as inviting Mata Hari to perform a Javanese dance completely nude at one of her parties, labeled "for women only, a lesbian orgy." Novelist Colette was barred, though she begged her husband to let her go.

With the collapse of Wall Street, many Americans returned home, except hard-core artists such as Henry Miller, who wandered around smoking Gauloises and writing Tropic of Cancer, which was banned in America. "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive," Miller said. Eventually, he met diarist Anaïs Nin, and they began to live a life that gave both of them material for their prose. But even such die-hards as Miller and Nin eventually realized that 1930s Paris was collapsing as war clouds loomed. Gertrude and Alice remained in France as other American expats fled to safer shores.

The Winds of War

Thanks to an array of alliances, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, France had no choice but to declare war. Within a few months, on June 14, 1940, Nazi armies marched down the Champs-Elysées and passed beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Newsreel cameras recorded the French openly weeping at the sight. The city suffered little from the war materially, but for 4 years it survived in a kind of half-life -- cold, dull, and drab -- fostering scattered pockets of fighters who resisted sometimes passively and sometimes with active sabotage.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, the French government, under Marshal Henri Pétain (1856-1951), moved to the isolated resort of Vichy and cooperated (or collaborated, depending on your point of view) with the Nazis. Tremendous internal dissension, the memory of which still simmers today, pitted many factions against one another. The Free French Resistance fled for its own safety to London, where it was headed by Charles de Gaulle (1880-1970). On September 9, 1945, a government of national unity was formed under de Gaulle's presidency. A constituent National Assembly was then elected. De Gaulle's disagreement with the National Assembly led in January 1946 to the tendering of his resignation.

Postwar Paris

Despite gains in prestige and prosperity after the end of World War II, Paris was rocked many times by internal dissent as domestic and international events embroiled the government in controversy. In 1951, Paris celebrated the 2,000th anniversary of the city's founding and poured much energy into rebuilding its image as a center of fashion, lifestyle, and glamour. Paris became internationally recognized as both a staple in the travel diets of many North Americans and a beacon for art and artists.

The War of Algerian Independence (1954-58), in which Algeria sought to change from being a French département (an integral extension of the French nation) to being an independent country, was an anguishing event, more devastating than the earlier loss of France's colonies. The population of France (Paris in particular) ballooned as French citizens fled Algeria and returned with few possessions and much bitterness. In 1958, as a result of the enormous loss of lives, money, and prestige in the Algerian affair, France's Fourth Republic collapsed, and de Gaulle was called out of retirement to form a new government, the Fifth Republic. In 1962, the Algerian War ended with victory for Algeria, as France's colonies in central and equatorial Africa became independent one by one. The sun had finally set on the French Empire.

In 1968, a general revolt by Parisian students, whose activism mirrored that of their counterparts in the United States, turned the capital into an armed camp, causing a near collapse of the national government and the very real possibility of total civil war. Though the crisis was averted, for several weeks it seemed as if French society were on the brink of anarchy.

Contemporary Paris

In 1981, François Mitterrand (1916-96) was elected the first Socialist president of France since before World War II by a very close vote. Massive amounts of capital were taken out of the country, and though the drain slowed after initial jitters, many wealthy Parisians still prefer to invest their money elsewhere.

Paris today still struggles with social unrest in Corsica and with Muslim fundamentalists both inside and outside France. In the mid-1990s, racial tensions continued to nag at France as the debate over immigration raged. Many right-wing political parties have created a racial backlash against North Africans and against "corruptive foreign influences" in general.

On his third try, Jacques Chirac (b. 1932), a longtime mayor of Paris, won the presidency of France in 1995 with 52% of the vote. Mitterrand turned over the reins on May 17 and died shortly thereafter. France embarked on a new era, but Chirac's popularity faded in the wake of unrest caused by an 11.5% unemployment rate. In the spring of 1998, France ousted its Conservative parties in an endorsement of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (b. 1937) and his Socialist-led government. The triumph of Jospin and his Communist and Green Party allies represented a disavowal of the center-right Conservatives. This was a stunning blow to Chirac's neo-Gaullists and the center-right parties led by François Leotard, and to Jean-Marie Le Pen's often-fanatical National Front.

By putting the Left back in charge, the French had voted against all the new ideas proposed for pushing their country into competitiveness and out of its economic doldrums. But Jospin's popularity gradually diminished, and in the elections of 2002, he was voted out of office and announced his retirement from politics. Jacques Chirac came back into power and became one of the most powerful leaders opposing the United States' war in Iraq.

In 1999, France joined 11 other European Union countries in adopting the euro as its standard of currency, though the French franc remained in circulation until March 2002. The new currency, it is hoped, will accelerate the creation of a single economy, comprising nearly 300 million Europeans, with a combined gross national product approaching, by some estimates, $9 trillion, larger than that of the United States.

In February 2005, President George W. Bush flew to Europe to mend fences with some of his worst critics, notably French President Chirac. The two political foes, who will never be great friends, found common ground on such issues as Syria and Lebanon. Iraq remained a thorny problem. Chirac, a self-styled expert on cows after serving as a former agriculture minister, was not invited to Bush's Texas ranch. When asked why not, Bush enigmatically said, "I'm looking for a good cowboy."

Late in 2005, decades of pent-up resentment felt by the children of African immigrants exploded into an orgy of violence and vandalism. Riots began in the suburbs of Paris and spread around the country. Throughout France, gangs of youths battled the French police, torched schools, cars, and businesses, and even attacked commuter trains. Rioting followed in such cities as Dijon, Marseilles, and Rouen. Most of the rioters were the sons of Arab and black African immigrants; Muslims living in a mostly Catholic country. The reason for the protests? Leaders of the riots claimed they live "like second-class citizens," even though they are French citizens. Unemployment is 30% higher in the ethnic ghettos of France.

In the spring of 2006, Jacques Chirac signed a law that made it easier for employers to fire workers, which set off massive demonstrations across France. Some one million protesters staged marches and strikes against the law, which was rescinded on April 10, 2006.

In June of 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, the combative son of a Hungarian immigrant, was elected president of France. He promised to reinvigorate ties with France's traditional ally, the United States. His election was followed with scattered violence throughout the country from anti-Sarkozy protesters. In 2005 he'd called rioters in Paris's immigrant heavy suburbs "scum," which was blamed for inciting the country's worst violence in 4 decades. Sarkozy has promised to be president of "all the French" during his administration.

In all this muddle, Sarkozy found time to divorce a wife and take a beautiful new bride. A glamorous model turned singer, the sexy Carla Bruni is the new first lady of France. "The Carla effect," as it's called in Paris, has decreased Sarkozy's popularity -- that and his failure to revive France's ailing economy. The tabloids have had a field day with the First Lady, revealing former lovers such as Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and Donald Trump, even Laurent Fabius (a former French prime minister).