Paris, France
Paris, city and capital of France, situated in the north-central part of the country. People were living on the site of the present-day city, located along the Seine River some 233 miles (375 km) upstream from the river’s mouth on the English Channel (La Manche), by about 7600 BCE. The modern city has spread from the island (the Île de la Cité) and far beyond both banks of the Seine.
Paris occupies a central position in the rich agricultural region known as the Paris Basin, and it constitutes one of eight départements of the Île-de-France administrative region. It is by far the country’s most important centre of commerce and culture. Area city, 41 square miles (105 square km); metropolitan area, 890 square miles (2,300 square km). Pop. (2012) city, 2,265,886; (2015 est.) urban agglomeration, 10,858,000.
Character of the city
For centuries Paris has been one of the world’s most important and attractive cities. It is appreciated for the opportunities it offers for business and commerce, for study, for culture, and for entertainment; its gastronomy, haute couture, painting, literature, and intellectual community especially enjoy an enviable reputation. Its sobriquet “the City of Light” (“la Ville Lumière”), earned during the Enlightenment, remains appropriate, for Paris has retained its importance as a centre for education and intellectual pursuits.
Paris’s site at a crossroads of both water and land routes significant not only to France but also to Europe has had a continuing influence on its growth. Under Roman administration, in the 1st century BCE, the original site on the Île de la Cité was designated the capital of the Parisii tribe and territory. The Frankish king Clovis I had taken Paris from the Gauls by 494 CE and later made his capital there. Under Hugh Capet (ruled 987–996) and the Capetian dynasty the preeminence of Paris was firmly established, and Paris became the political and cultural hub as modern France took shape. France has long been a highly centralized country, and Paris has come to be identified with a powerful central state, drawing to itself much of the talent and vitality of the provinces.
The three main parts of historical Paris are defined by the Seine. At its centre is the Île de la Cité, which is the seat of religious and temporal authority (the word cité connotes the nucleus of the ancient city). The Seine’s Left Bank (Rive Gauche) has traditionally been the seat of intellectual life, and its Right Bank (Rive Droite) contains the heart of the city’s economic life, but the distinctions have become blurred in recent decades. The fusion of all these functions at the centre of France and, later, at the centre of an empire, resulted in a tremendously vital environment. In this environment, however, the emotional and intellectual climate that was created by contending powers often set the stage for great violence in both the social and political arenas—the years 1358, 1382, 1588, 1648, 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871 being notable for such events.
In its centuries of growth Paris has for the most part retained the circular shape of the early city. Its boundaries have spread outward to engulf the surrounding towns (bourgs), usually built around monasteries or churches and often the site of a market. From the mid-14th to the mid-16th century, the city’s growth was mainly eastward; since then it has been westward. It comprises 20 arrondissements (municipal districts), each of which has its own mayor, town hall, and particular features. The numbering begins in the heart of Paris and continues in the spiraling shape of a snail shell, ending to the far east. Parisians refer to the arrondissements by number as the first (premier), second (deuxième), third (troisième), and so on. Adaptation to the problems of urbanization—such as immigration, housing, social infrastructure, public utilities, suburban development, and zoning—has produced the vast urban agglomeration.
Landscape
City site
Paris is positioned at the centre of the Île-de-France region, which is crossed by the Seine, Oise, and Marne rivers. The city is ringed with great forests of beech and oak; they are called the “lungs of Paris,” for they help to purify the air in the heavily industrialized region. The city proper is small; no corner is farther than about 6 miles (10 km) from the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral. It occupies a depression hollowed out by the Seine, and the surrounding heights have been respected as the limits of the city. Elevation varies from 430 feet (130 metres) at the butte of Montmartre, in the north, to 85 feet (26 metres) in the Grenelle area, in the southwest.
The Seine flows for about 8 miles (13 km) through the centre of the city and 10 of the 20 arrondissements. It enters the city at the southeast corner, flows northwestward, and turns gradually southwestward, eventually leaving Paris at the southwest corner. As a result, what starts out as the stream’s east bank becomes its north bank and ends as the west bank, and the Parisians therefore adopted the simple, unchanging designation of Right Bank and Left Bank (when facing downstream). Specific places, however, are usually indicated by arrondissement or by quarter (quartier).
At water level, some 30 feet (9 metres) below street level, the river is bordered—at least on those portions not transformed into expressways—by cobbled quays graced with trees and shrubs. From street level another line of trees leans toward the water. Between the two levels, the retaining walls, usually made of massive stone blocks, are decorated with the great iron rings once used to moor merchant vessels, and some are pierced by openings left by water gates for old palaces or inspection ports for subways, sewers, and underpasses. At intermittent points the walls are shawled in ivy.
The garden effect of the Seine’s open waters and its tree-lined banks foster in part the appearance of Paris as a city well-endowed with green spaces. Tens of thousands of trees (mostly plane trees, with a scattering of chestnuts) line the streets as well, and numerous public parks, gardens, and squares dot the city. Most of the parks and gardens of the modern central city are on land that formerly was reserved for the kings on the old city’s outskirts. Under Napoleon III, who had been impressed by London’s parks while living in Britain, two ancient royal military preserves at the approaches to Paris were made into “English” parks—the Bois de Boulogne to the west and the Bois de Vincennes to the east. Moreover, during his reign a large area of land was laid out in promenades and garden squares. Under Mayor Jacques Chirac in the late 20th century, the municipal government initiated efforts to create new parks, and such projects continued into the 21st century.
The Promenade Plantée is a partially elevated parkway built along an abandoned rail line and viaduct in the 12th arrondissement (municipal district) of Paris, on the right bank of the Seine River. It was the world’s first elevated park (first phase completed in 1994) and the first “green space” constructed on a viaduct; it has since inspired other cities to turn abandoned rail lines into public parkland. The entire feature runs some 4.5 km (about 3 miles) from the Opéra Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. Located underneath the elevated portion is the Viaduc des Arts, which stretches along the Avenue Daumesnil. Its former archways house specialized commercial establishments.
Île de la Cité
Situated in the Seine in the centre of Paris, the ship-shaped Île de la Cité is the historical heart of the city. It is about 10 streets long and 5 wide. Eight bridges link it to the riverbanks, and a ninth leads to the Île Saint-Louis, the smaller island that lies to the southeast. The westernmost bridge is the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), which was built from 1578 to 1604. Despite its name, it is the oldest of the Paris bridges (others predate it but have been rebuilt). Its sturdiness has become axiomatic: Parisians still say that something is “solid as the Pont Neuf.” The bridge, supported in the middle by the tip of the island, extends five arches to the Left Bank and seven to the Right. The parapet corbels are decorated with more than 250 different grotesque masks. The parapet curves out toward the water at each bridge pier, forming half-moon bays along what was the first sidewalk in Paris; in these bays street vendors set up shop. For 200 years this bridge was the main street and the perpetual fair of Paris. Although the structure undergoes regular repair, in the main Pont Neuf as it exists today is the original bridge.
Downstream and just below the bridge, the tip of the Île de la Cité is fashioned into a triangular gravel-pathed park bordered by flowering bushes, with benches under the ancient trees. It is surrounded by a wide cobbled quay that is especially popular with sunbathers and lovers. Where the steps go onto the bridge from the park, there is a bronze equestrian statue of King Henry IV, who insisted on completion of the Pont Neuf. The statue is an 1818 reproduction of the 1614 original, which was the first statue to stand on a public way in Paris. Opposite is the narrow entrance to the Place Dauphine (1607), named for Henry’s heir (le dauphin), the future Louis XIII. The place was formerly a triangle of uniform red-brick houses pointed in white stone, but the row of houses along its base was ripped out in 1871 to make room for construction of part of the Palace of Justice (Palais de Justice).
The palace of the early Roman governor (now the Palace of Justice) was rebuilt on the same site by King Louis IX (St. Louis) in the 13th century and enlarged 100 years later by Philip IV (the Fair), who added the grim gray-turreted Conciergerie, with its impressive Gothic chambers. The Great Hall (Grand Chambre), which, under the kings, was the meeting place of the Parlement (the high court of justice), was known throughout Europe for its Gothic beauty. Fires in 1618 and 1871 destroyed much of the original room, however, and most of the rest of the palace was devastated by flames in 1776. The Great Hall now serves as a waiting room for the various courts of law housed in the Palace of Justice. In the adjoining first Civil Chamber, the Revolutionary Tribunal sat from 1793, condemning some 2,600 persons to the guillotine. After being sentenced, the victims were taken back down the stone stairs to the dungeons of the Conciergerie to await the tumbrels, the carts that carried them to the place of execution. The Conciergerie still stands and is open to visitors.
In the palace courtyards is found one of the great monuments of France, the 13th-century Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel). Built at Louis IX’s direction between 1243 and 1248, it is a masterpiece of Gothic Rayonnant style. With great daring, the architect (possibly Pierre de Montreuil) poised his vaulted ceilings on a trellis of slender columns, the walls between being made of stained glass. The exquisite chapel was designed to hold the Crown of Thorns, thought to be the very one worn by Jesus at his crucifixion. Louis IX had purchased the relic from the Venetians, who held it in pawn from Baldwin II Porphyrogenitus, the Latin emperor of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Other holy relics, such as nails and pieces of wood from the True Cross, were added to the chapel’s collection, the remnants of which are now in the treasury of Notre-Dame.
Under King Louis-Philippe, the “sanitization” of the island was begun in the 19th century, and it was continued for his successor, Napoleon III, by Baron Haussmann. The project involved a mass clearing of antiquated structures, the widening of streets and squares, and the erection of massive new government offices, including parts of the Palace of Justice. The portion of the palace that borders the Quai des Orfèvres—formerly the goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ quay—became the headquarters of the Paris municipal detective force, the Police Judiciaire (Judicial Police).
Across the boulevard du Palais is the Police Prefecture, another 19th-century structure. On the far side of the prefecture is the Place du Parvis-Notre-Dame, an open space enlarged six times by Haussmann, who also moved the Hôtel-Dieu, the first hospital in Paris, from the riverside to the inland side of the square. Its present buildings date from 1868.
Notre-Dame de Paris
At the eastern end of the Île de la Cité is the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, which is situated on a spot that Parisians have always reserved for the practice of religious rites. The Gallo-Roman boatmen of the cité erected their altar to Jupiter there (it is now in the city’s Museum of the Middle Ages), and, when Christianity was established, a church was built on the temple site. The reputed first bishop of Paris, St. Denis, became its patron saint. The red in the colours of Paris represents the blood of this martyr, who, in popular legend, after decapitation, picked up his head and walked.
When Maurice de Sully became bishop in 1159, he decided to replace the decrepit cathedral of Saint-Étienne and the 6th-century Notre-Dame with a church in the new Gothic style. The style was conceived in France, and a new structural development, the flying buttress, which added to the beauty of the exterior and permitted interior columns to soar to new heights, was introduced in the building of Notre-Dame. Construction began in 1163 and continued until 1345.
After being damaged during the French Revolution, the church was sold at auction to a building-materials merchant. Napoleon I came to power in time to annul the sale, and he ordered that the edifice be redecorated for his coronation as emperor in 1804. King Louis-Philippe later initiated restoration of the neglected church. The architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc worked from 1845 to 1864 to restore the monument.
By the 21st century, prolonged exposure to the weather and decades of damage from acid rain had compromised much of the cathedral’s exterior stonework, and the French government spent millions of euros annually on restoration and maintenance. In April 2019, during one such renovation project, Notre-Dame was ravaged by a fire that destroyed its roof and caused its iconic steeple to collapse. Like all cathedrals in France, Notre-Dame is the property of the state, although its operation as a religious institution is left entirely to the Roman Catholic Church.
A few 16th- and 17th-century buildings survive north of the cathedral. They are what remains of the Cloister of the Cathedral Chapter, whose school was famous long before the new cathedral was built. Early in the 12th century one of its theologians, Peter Abelard, left the cloister with his disciples, crossed to the Left Bank, and set up an independent school in the open air in the Convent of the Paraclete near the present-day Place Maubert. After a prolonged struggle with the monks of Saint-Denis, the followers of Abelard in 1200 won the right, from both the king and the pope, to form and govern their own community. This was the beginning of the University of Paris.
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