User:Josefu/Work In Progress/Paris History

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For a complete article on Paris' history, please see the 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 fifty years later the city had spread to the left bank of the Seine, now known as the Latin Quarter, and had been 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 (1180-1223), 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.

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.

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War ended in a siege of Paris. Fortunately the Prussian Commander, General von Blumenthal, refused to bombard it. The Paris Commune followed. It surrendered in 1871 after a winter of famine and bloodshed. The Eiffel Tower, the best-known landmark in Paris, was built in 1889 in a period of prosperity known as La Belle Époque (The Beautiful period). The famous Parisian Haussmann Style also dates back to this period.

In 1900 Paris hosted the 1900 Summer Olympics, and hosted them again in 1924 (1924 Summer Olympics).

In June 1940, several weeks after the German attack on France during World War II, 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.

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 neighborhood 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) and preserves Paris proper as a city of museums and monuments.

[edit] Administration

The city of Paris is itself a département of France (Paris, 75), part of the Île-de-France région. Paris is divided into twenty numerically arranged districts, the arrondissements. These districts are numbered in a spiral pattern with the 1er arrondissement at the center of the city.

The city of Paris also comprises two forests: the Bois de Boulogne on the west and the Bois de Vincennes on the east.

Prior to 1968, département 75 was the Seine département, which contained the city of Paris and its immediate suburbs. The splitting up of the Seine département resulted in the creation of four new départements: Paris proper (75), and three départements (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne) forming a ring around Paris, often called la petite couronne (i.e. the "small ring", as opposed to the "large ring" of the more distant suburbs of Paris).

As an exception to the normal rules for French cities, some powers normally vested in the mayor of the city are instead vested in a representative of the national government, the Prefecture of Police which also controls the Paris Fire Brigade. As an example, Paris has no municipal police force, though it has some traffic wardens. This is a legacy of the situation that up to 1977, Paris had no mayor and was essentially run by the prefectoral administration.

Citizens of Paris elect in each arrondissement some municipal council members. Each arrondissement has its own council, which elects the mayor of the arrondissement. Some members of the arrondissement councils form the Council of Paris, which elects the mayor of Paris, and has the double functions of a municipal council and the general council of the département.

Bertrand Delanoë has been the Paris_Mayors since March 18, 2001. Mr Delanoë is openly homosexual.

Former mayors Jacques Chirac and Jean Tiberi were cited in corruption scandals in the Paris region.

Unlike other French cities, Paris does not have an intercomunality to govern the whole metropolitan area (ie Paris and its suburbs) and is not expected to have one any time soon.