Paris II

Paris

Paris (Paris in French, pronounced [paʁi] (? · I)) is the capital of France and the Ile de France region. Formed in the only community unidepartamental the country, is situated along both banks of the meandering river Seine in central Paris Basin, between the confluence of the Marne and the Seine river, upstream, and the Oise and the Seine, downstream.

The city of Paris within its administrative boundaries is a narrow population of 2,193,031 inhabitants (2007). However, during the twentieth century, the Paris metropolitan area expanded beyond the city limits of Paris, and is today the third largest city in Europe, with a population of 11,836,970 inhabitants (2007).

The Paris region (Ile de France), together with London, the most important economic center of Europe. With 552.7 billion euros (813.4 billion dollars), produced more than a quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of France in 2008.  La Défense is the first European business district, houses the headquarters of almost half of large French companies, as well as the headquarters of twenty the 100 largest in the world. Paris also hosts many international organizations such as UNESCO, OECD, International Chamber of Commerce or the Paris Club.

The city is a popular tourist destination in the world, with more than 26 million foreign visitors per year. It has many of the most famous and admired monuments of the world: the Eiffel Tower, the Cathedral of Notre Dame Avenue the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, the former Hospital of the Invalides, the Pantheon, the Arch of Defense, the Opera Garnier and Montmartre district, among others. It also hosts world-renowned institutions: the Louvre (the most famous and visited museum in the world), the Orsay Museum and National Museum of Natural History in France.

The area of ​​modern Paris has been inhabited since at least the fourth millennium BC C.. Archaeological finds dating from this period show that there was a settlement near Bercy, on the right bank of the Seine, which was an early proponent of Culture Chasse. Among the findings there are canoes. It is believed that a settlement on the present site of Paris was founded about 250 BC by a Celtic tribe called Parisio, who established a fishing village near the river Seine. The Ile de la Cité was traditionally assumed that the location of this settlement, but this theory has recently been questioned. Recent archaeological finds indicate that the Paris region's largest pre-Roman settlement may have been present in the suburb deNanterre.  In the eleventh century BC a Celtic people called Parisii, fortified the island of la Cité, which is the heart of the city . In the year 52 a. C. the Romans founded a city on the same site where his village had Parisii and expanding on both banks of the Seine was called Lutetia, Paris is today, a name taken from the early Celtic settlers.

                                                         

The city was attacked by the Huns, but according to legend was able to resist thanks to the leadership of St. Genevieve (the patron saint of the city), in 451. Rome lost control of the city at the hands of the Germanic peoples and the Frankish king Clovis I installed it in 508. In the ninth century the Vikings made ​​the city (unsuccessfully besieged in the years 885-886) and then Hugh Capet established it, radical reform. The Seine was the main shopping street of the region, and Paris soon concentrated wine export trade "in France", ie, the Île-de-France. No later than 1121 traders had already organized the Hanse Parisienne, the "Hansa of merchants of water," which won the king's monopoly of trade between the city and Mantes-la-Jolie, a privilege confirmed in 1170 by Louis VII. This privilege was granted to protect competition Parisian merchants of Rouen at a time when the Duke of Normandy was the king of England, but remained after Philip II Augustus seize Normandy in 1204. Thus, the shipping hansa Paris, with its provost and notaries will be the germ of the city council, and the boat that still represented today adorns the arms of Paris. In 1190 Philip II Augustus, built a defensive wall on both sides of river. The city was an important stage in the Hundred Years War.

                                           

At the beginning of this  period the city is the center of important socio-cultural transformations. Henry IV and Catherine de Medici, are central characters in this phase. The city was an important Gothic and Renaissance and its population in 1500 was of 185,000 inhabitants, the second in Europe after Constantinople. On August 24, 1572 in the city breaks the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a capital in the episode called Wars of Religion. As the largest city and center of power in France, Paris hosted some of the most important figures of history in this period, thinkers like Voltaire, rulers as Louis XIV and statesmen like Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert. Additionally, the city and especially the nearby town of Versailles, formed an example of what should be the architecture of a capital. In 1786 began the transfer of human bones from the cemetery of Les Halles, to the quarries excavated in the Gallo-Roman period to 20 feet deep in the foundations of Montparnasse, Montrouge and Montsorius, thus forming the famous catacombs of Paris. In the fortress of the Bastille which was in the east of the city, officially began the movement known as the French Revolution.