It was
Rome
that put Paris on the map, as it did the rest of western Europe. When Julius Caesar's armies arrived in 52 BC, they found a Celtic settlement confined to an island in the Seine - the Île de la Cité.
Under the name of Lutetia, it remained a
Roman colony
for the next three hundred years, prosperous commercially because of its commanding position on the Seine trade route, but insignificant politically. The Romans established their administrative centre on the Île de la Cité, and their town on the Left Bank on the slopes of the Montagne Ste-Geneviève. Though only two monuments from this period remain today - the baths by the
Hôtel de Cluny
and the amphitheatre in rue Monge - the Roman
street plan
, still evident in the north-south axis of rue St-Martin and rue St-Jacques, determined the future growth of the city.
Although Roman rule disintegrated under the impact of
Germanic invasions
around 275 AD, Paris held out until it fell to
Clovis the Frank
in 486, whose conversion to Christianity hastened the
Christianization
of the whole country. Under his successors, Paris saw the foundation of several rich and influential monasteries, especially on the Left Bank.
With the election of
Hugues Capet
, Comte de Paris, as king in 987, the fate of the city was inextricably identified with that of the
monarchy
. Recurrent political tension between the classes and the crown led to open
rebellion
, such as in 1356, when Étienne Marcel, a wealthy cloth merchant, demanded greater autonomy for the city. Further rebellions, fuelled by the hopeless poverty of the lower classes, led to the king and court abandoning the capital in 1418, not to return for more than a hundred years.
Growth of the city
As the city's livelihood depended from the first on its river-borne trade, commercial activity naturally centred on the place where the goods were landed. This was the
place de Grève
on the
Right Bank
, where the Hôtel de Ville now...
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Civil wars and foreign occupation
From the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, Paris shared the same unhappy fate as the rest of France, embroiled in the long and destructive
Hundred Years War
with the English. The country reached its lowest point when the English...
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Planning and expansion
The first systematic attempts at
planning
were introduced by Henri IV at the beginning of the seventeenth century: regulating street lines and uniformity of façade, and laying out the first geometric squares. The
place des Vosges
dates...
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The 1789 Revolution
The immediate cause of the
Revolution
of 1789 was a campaign by the clergy and nobility to protect their status - especially their exemption from taxation - from erosion by the royal government. The revolutionary movement, however, was quickly...
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Napoleon - and the barricades
Napoleon's chief legacy to France was a very centralized, authoritarian and efficient
bureaucracy
that put Paris in firm control of the rest of the country. For the rest of the nineteenth century after his demise, France was left to fight out,...
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Expansion and the changing face of the city
There followed a period of
foreign acquisitions
on every continent and of
laissez-faire capitalism
at home, both of which greatly increased the economic wealth of France, then lagging far behind Britain in the industrialization...
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The Siege of Paris and the Commune
In September 1870, Napoleon III surrendered to Bismarck at the border town of Sedan, less than two months after France had declared war on the well-prepared and superior forces of the
Prussian
state. The humiliation was enough for a...
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The Belle Époque
Physical recovery was remarkably quick. Within six or seven years few signs of the fighting remained. Visitors remarked admiringly on the teeming streets, the expensive shops and energetic nightlife. Charles Garnier's Opéra was opened in 1875. Aptly...
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The German Occupation
During the
occupation of Paris
in World War II, the Germans found some sections of Parisian society, as well as the minions of the Vichy government, only too happy to hobnob with them. For four years the city suffered fascist rule with...
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Postwar Paris - one more try at revolution
Postwar Paris has remained no stranger to
political battles
in its streets. Violent demonstrations accompanied the Communist withdrawal from the coalition government in 1947. In the 1950s, the Left took to the streets again in protest against...
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The Mitterrand era, 1981-95
The
Socialists'
first government after 23 years in opposition included four Communist ministers: an alliance reflected in the government commitments to expanded state control of industry, reduction of the hours in the working week, high...
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Modern developments of the city
Until World War II, Paris remained pretty much as Haussmann had left it. Housing conditions showed little sign of improvement. There was even an outbreak of bubonic plague in Clignancourt in 1921. In 1925, a third of the houses still had no sewage...
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The political present
Mitterrand's avuncular fourteen-year presidency was well calculated and a hard act to follow, but general unease demanded a change of direction.
Lionel Jospin
, the uncharismatic former education minister, performed remarkably well in the...
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