Paris

Paris
Capital city, commune, arrondissement and department
Location of Paris Location of Paris
Flag Coat of arms Logo
Motto(s): Fluctuat nec mergitur "Tossed by the waves but never sunk"
Location of Paris
Paris Location within France Paris Location within Île-de-France (region)
Coordinates: 48°51′24″N 2°21′08″E / 48.8567°N 2.3522°E
Country	France
Region	Île-de-France
Department	Paris
Arrondissement	Paris
Intercommunality	Métropole du Grand Paris
Subdivisions	20 arrondissements
Government
• Mayor (2026–32)	Emmanuel Grégoire (PS)
Area 1	105.4 km2 (40.7 sq mi)
• Urban ()	2,824.2 km2 (1,090.4 sq mi)
• Metro ()	18,940.7 km2 (7,313.0 sq mi)
Population (Jan 2026)	2,047,602
• Rank	9th in Europe 1st in France
• Density	19,430/km2 (50,320/sq mi)
• Urban (2023)	11,013,774
• Urban density	3,899.8/km2 (10,100/sq mi)
• Metro (2023)	13,320,752
• Metro density	703.287/km2 (1,821.51/sq mi)
Demonym(s)	Parisian(s) (en) Parisien(s) (masc.), Parisienne(s) (fem.) (fr), Parigot(s) (masc.), "Parigote(s)" (fem.) (fr, colloquial)
GDP (nominal, 2024)
• Capital City	€279.938 billion
• Metro	€865.652 billion
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
INSEE/Postal code	75056 /75001–75020, 75116
Elevation	28–131 m (92–430 ft) (avg. 78 m or 256 ft)
Website	www.paris.fr
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km2 (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Paris is the capital and largest city of France, with an estimated city population of 2.04 million in an area of 105.4 km² (40.7 sq mi), and a metropolitan population of 13.2 million as of January 2026. Located on the river Seine in the centre of the Île-de-France region, it is the largest metropolitan area and fourth-most populous city in the European Union (EU). Paris is nicknamed the "City of Light", partly because of its role in the Age of Enlightenment.

Administratively, Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements (districts), each having their own cultural identity. Haussmann's renovation of Paris, which created new boulevards, parks, and public works, gave birth to a modern city known as the "capital of the 19th century". Paris is a major railway, motorway, and air-transport hub; in 2024 Charles de Gaulle Airport was the EU's busiest airport. Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems in the world and is one of only two cities that have received the Sustainable Transport Award twice. Its Art Nouveau-decorated Métro has become a symbol of the city. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Musée d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet, and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, while the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Musée Rodin, and Musée Picasso are noted for their collections of modern and contemporary art. Parts of the city along the Seine have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

The president of France and both houses of the French Parliament sit in Paris. Paris is home to several United Nations organisations, including UNESCO, as well as other international organisations such as the OECD, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (in neighbouring Saint-Cloud), the International Energy Agency, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the International Federation for Human Rights, and the Fédération internationale de l'Automobile, along with European bodies such as the European Space Agency, the European Banking Authority, and the European Securities and Markets Authority. The city hosts many sporting events, such as the French Open, and is the home of the association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français. Paris has also hosted the Summer Olympics three times, in 1900, 1924 and 2024.

Etymology

The ancient oppidum that corresponds to the modern city of Paris was first mentioned in the mid-1st century BC by Julius Caesar as Lutetia Parisiorum ('Lutetia of the Parisii') and is later attested as Parision in the 5th century AD, then as Paris in 1265. During the Roman period, it was commonly known as Lutetia in Latin, which is interpreted as either stemming from the Celtic root *lukot- ('mouse'), or from *luto- ('marsh, swamp').

The name Paris is derived from its early inhabitants, the Parisii, a Gallic tribe from the Iron Age and the Roman period. The meaning of the Gaulish ethnonym remains debated. According to Xavier Delamarre, it may derive from the Celtic root pario- ('cauldron'). Alfred Holder interpreted the name as 'the makers' or 'the commanders', by comparing it to the Welsh peryff ('lord, commander'), both possibly descending from a Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as *kwar-is-io-. Alternatively, Pierre-Yves Lambert proposed to translate Parisii as the 'spear people', by connecting the first element to the Old Irish carr ('spear'), derived from an earlier *kwar-sā.

Residents of the city are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens ([paʁizjɛ̃] ^ⓘ). They are also pejoratively called Parigots ([paʁiɡo] ^ⓘ).

History

Origins

The Parisii people inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the Île de la Cité, which gradually became an important trading centre. The Parisii traded with many river towns, some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula, and minted their own coins.

Julius Caesar conquered the Paris Basin for the Roman Republic in 52 BC and began the Roman settlement on Paris's Left Bank. The Roman town was originally called Lutetia, more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii", modern French Lutèce. It became a prosperous city with a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that later became Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin "Hill of Martyrs"), later "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris, and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île de la Cité failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845. Still, Paris's strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris (885–886), for which the then Count of Paris (comte de Paris), Odo of France, was elected king of West Francia. From the Capetian dynasty that began with the 987 election of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks (duc des Francs), as king of a unified West Francia, Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France.

High and Late Middle Ages to Louis XIV

By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France. Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, started the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral in 1163, and was completed after 182 years. After the marshland between the river Seine and its slower 'dead arm' to its north was filled in from around the 10th century, Paris's cultural centre began to move to the Right Bank. In 1137, a new city marketplace (today's Les Halles) replaced the two smaller ones on the Île de la Cité and Place de Grève (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). The latter location housed the headquarters of Paris's river trade corporation. This organisation later became, unofficially (although formally in later years), Paris's first municipal government.

In the late 12th century, Philip Augustus extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions from the west, gave the city its first walls between 1190 and 1215, rebuilt its bridges to either side of its central island, and paved its main thoroughfares. In 1190, he transformed Paris's former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that became the University of Paris and drew students from all of Europe.

With 200,000 inhabitants in 1328, Paris, then already the capital of France, was the most populous city of Europe. By comparison, London in 1300 had 80,000 inhabitants. Around 1340 the city had between 250,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. By the early fourteenth century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit".

During the Hundred Years' War, Paris was occupied by England-friendly Burgundian forces from 1418, before being occupied outright by the English when Henry V of England entered the French capital in 1420; despite a 1429 effort by Joan of Arc to liberate the city, it would remain under English occupation until 1436.

In the late 16th century French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic League, the organisers of 24 August 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which thousands of French Protestants were killed. The conflicts ended when pretender to the throne Henry IV, after converting to Catholicism to gain entry to the capital, entered the city in 1594 to claim the crown of France. This king made several improvements to the capital during his reign: he completed the construction of Paris's first uncovered, sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, built a Louvre extension connecting it to the Tuileries Palace, and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. Despite Henry IV's efforts to improve city circulation, the narrowness of Paris's streets was a contributing factor in his assassination near Les Halles marketplace in 1610.

During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe. He built five new bridges, a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne, and a palace for himself, the Palais-Cardinal. After Richelieu died in 1642, it was renamed the Palais-Royal.

Due to the Parisian uprisings during the Fronde civil war, Louis XIV moved his court to a new palace, Versailles, in 1682. Although no longer the capital of France, arts and sciences in the city flourished with the Comédie-Française, the Academy of Painting, and the French Academy of Sciences. To demonstrate that the city was safe from attack, the king had the city walls demolished and replaced with tree-lined boulevards that would become the Grands Boulevards. Other marks of his reign were the Collège des Quatre-Nations, the Place Vendôme, the Place des Victoires, and Les Invalides.

Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, and gastronomy since the 17th century.

18th and 19th centuries

Paris grew in population from about 400,000 in 1640 to 650,000 in 1780. A new boulevard named the Champs-Élysées extended the city west to Étoile, while the working-class neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the eastern side of the city grew increasingly crowded with poor migrant workers from other regions of France. Paris's role in education and sciences led Paris to be known as the City of Light during the age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

In the summer of 1789, Paris became the centre stage of the French Revolution. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, with which it stormed the Bastille, a principal symbol of royal authority. The first independent Paris Commune, or city council, met in the Hôtel de Ville and elected a Mayor, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, on 15 July.

Louis XVI and the royal family were brought to Paris and incarcerated in the Tuileries Palace. In 1793, as the revolution turned increasingly radical, the king, queen, and mayor were beheaded by guillotine in the Reign of Terror, along with more than 16,000 others throughout France. The property of the aristocracy and the church was nationalised, and the city's churches were closed, sold, or demolished. A succession of revolutionary factions ruled Paris until 9 November 1799 (coup d'état du 18 brumaire), when Napoleon Bonaparte seized power as First Consul.

The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but after 1799 it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000 by 1815. Napoleon replaced the elected government of Paris with a prefect who reported directly to him. He began erecting monuments to military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe, and improved the neglected infrastructure of the city with new fountains, the Canal de l'Ourcq, Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city's first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts. The Arc de Triomphe was eventually completed in 1836.

During the Restoration, the bridges and squares of Paris were returned to their pre-Revolution names; the July Revolution in 1830, commemorated by the July Column on the Place de la Bastille, brought to power a constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe I. The first railway line to Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city. In 1848, Louis-Philippe was overthrown by a popular uprising in the streets of Paris. His successor, Napoleon III, alongside the newly appointed prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, launched a huge public works project to build wide new boulevards, a new opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. In 1860, Napoleon III annexed the surrounding towns and created eight new arrondissements, expanding Paris to its current limits.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Paris was besieged by the Prussian Army. Following several months of blockade, hunger, and then bombardment by the Prussians, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. After seizing power in Paris on 28 March, a revolutionary government known as the Paris Commune held power for two months, before being harshly suppressed by the French army during the "Bloody Week" at the end of May 1871.

In the late 19th century, Paris hosted two major international expositions: the 1889 Universal Exposition, which featured the new Eiffel Tower, was held to mark the centennial of the French Revolution; and the 1900 Universal Exposition gave Paris the Pont Alexandre III, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the first Paris Métro line. Paris became the laboratory of Naturalism (Émile Zola) and Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine), and of Impressionism in art (Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir).

20th and 21st centuries

By 1901, the population of Paris had grown to about 2,715,000. At the beginning of the century, artists from around the world, including Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, and Henri Matisse made Paris their home. It was the birthplace of Fauvism, Cubism and abstract art, and authors such as Marcel Proust were exploring new approaches to literature.

During the First World War, Paris sometimes found itself on the front line; 600 to 1,000 Paris taxis played a small but highly important symbolic role in transporting 6,000 soldiers to the front line at the First Battle of the Marne. The city was also bombed by Zeppelins and shelled by German long-range guns. In the years after the war, known as Les Années Folles, Paris continued to be a mecca for writers, musicians and artists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Josephine Baker, Eva Kotchever, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Sidney Bechet and Salvador Dalí.

In the years after the peace conference, the city was also home to growing numbers of students and activists from French colonies and other Asian and African countries, who later became leaders of their countries, such as Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

On 14 June 1940, the German army marched into Paris, which had been declared an "open city". On 16–17 July 1942, following German orders, the French police and gendarmes arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,115 children, and confined them during five days at the Vel d'Hiv, from which they were transported by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. None of the children came back. On 25 August 1944, the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army. General Charles de Gaulle led a huge and emotional crowd down the Champs Élysées towards Notre Dame de Paris and made a rousing speech from the Hôtel de Ville.

Paris became involved in the Algerian War for independence, which occurred in the 1950s and 1960s; in August 1961, the pro-independence FLN, targeted and killed 11 Paris policemen, leading to the imposition of a curfew on Muslims of Algeria (who, at that time, were French citizens). On 17 October 1961, an unauthorised but peaceful protest demonstration of Algerians against the curfew led to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, in which at least 40 people were killed. The anti-independence Organisation armée secrète (OAS) carried out a series of bombings in Paris throughout 1961 and 1962.

In May 1968, protesting students occupied the Sorbonne and put up barricades in the Latin Quarter. Thousands of Parisian blue-collar workers joined the students, and the movement grew into a two-week general strike. Supporters of the government won the June elections by a large majority. The May 1968 events in France resulted in the break-up of the University of Paris into 13 independent campuses. In 1975, the National Assembly changed the status of Paris to that of other French cities and, on 25 March 1977, Jacques Chirac became the first elected mayor of Paris since 1793.

The Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city at 57 storeys and 210 m (689 ft) high, was built between 1969 and 1973. It was highly controversial, and it remains the only building in the centre of the city over 32 storeys high. The population of Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs. A suburban railway network, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), was built to complement the Métro; the Périphérique expressway encircling the city was completed in 1973. The bank of the Seine in the city centre, which includes the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

Most of the postwar presidents of the Fifth Republic wanted to leave their own monuments in Paris; President Georges Pompidou started the Centre Georges Pompidou (1977), Valéry Giscard d'Estaing began the Musée d'Orsay (1986); President François Mitterrand had the Opéra Bastille built (1985–1989), the new site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1996), the Arche de la Défense (1985–1989) in La Défense, as well as the Louvre Pyramid with its underground courtyard (1983–1989); Jacques Chirac (2006), the Musée du quai Branly.

In the early 21st century, the population of Paris began to increase slowly again, as more young people moved into the city. It reached 2.25 million in 2011. In March 2001, Bertrand Delanoë became the first socialist mayor; he was re-elected in March 2008. Bertrand Delanoë also transformed a section of the highway along the Left Bank of the Seine into an urban promenade and park, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine, which he inaugurated in June 2013.

In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Grand Paris project to integrate Paris more closely with the towns in the region around it. After many modifications, the new area, named the Metropolis of Grand Paris, with a population of 6.7 million, was created on 1 January 2016. The City of Paris and the national government approved the plans for the Grand Paris Express four years later, totalling 205 km (127 mi) of automated metro lines to connect Paris, the innermost three departments around Paris, airports and high-speed rail (TGV) stations, at an estimated cost of €35 billion. The system is scheduled to be completed by 2030.

A series of attacks occurred in the Paris region, especially in Paris, in January 2015, the most serious being the shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. 17 people died in the attacks, which Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility. 1.5 million people marched in Paris in a show of solidarity against terrorism and in support of freedom of speech. Terrorist attacks, claimed by ISIL, occurred again in November, which killed 130 people and injured more than 350.

In an aim to limit the effects of climate change below 2 °C, the Paris Agreement was signed by 196 nations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on 22 April 2016 in Paris. The following year, billionaire François Pinault received a 50‑year lease to convert the historic Bourse de Commerce into a contemporary art museum, overseen by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Construction was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, reopening in May 2021. The Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire on 15 April 2019, beginning in the eaves of its roof, engulfing the spire and most of the roof. Firefighters were able to control the blaze, saving the main structure including the bell towers and rose windows, and there were no injuries; it was reopened on 7 December 2024.

In terms of international connectedness, as of 2024, Paris was one of eight cities worldwide that was classified as an "Alpha+" city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

Geography

Paris is located in northern central France, in a north-bending arc of the river Seine, whose crest includes two islands, the Île Saint-Louis and the larger Île de la Cité, which form the oldest part of Paris. The river's mouth on the English Channel (La Manche) is about 233 mi (375 km) downstream from Paris. Paris is spread widely on both banks of the river. Overall, Paris is relatively flat, and the lowest point is 35 m (115 ft) above sea level. Paris has several prominent hills, the highest of which is Montmartre at 130 m (427 ft).

Excluding the outlying parks of Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, Paris covers an oval measuring about 87 km² (34 sq mi) in area, enclosed by the 35 km (22 mi) ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique. Paris's last major annexation of outlying territories in 1860 gave it its modern form, and created the 20 clockwise-spiralling arrondissements (municipal boroughs). From the 1860 area of 78 km² (30 sq mi), the city limits were expanded marginally to 86.9 km² (33.6 sq mi) in the 1920s. In 1929, the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes forest parks were annexed to the city, bringing its area to about 105 km² (41 sq mi). The metropolitan area is 2,300 km² (890 sq mi).

Climate

Paris has a Oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb), typical of western Europe. This climate type features cool winters and warm summers, with average temperatures between 15 and 25 °C (59 and 77 °F) in July. Each year there are a few days when the temperature rises above 32 °C (90 °F). Longer periods of more intense heat sometimes occur, such as the heat wave of 2003, when temperatures exceeded 30 °C (86 °F) for weeks, reached 40 °C (104 °F) on some days, and rarely cooled down at night.

The weather in spring and autumn is generally mild during the day and cool at night, but is unstable. In winter, sunshine is scarce, days are cool, and nights are cold but generally above freezing, with low temperatures around 3 °C (37 °F). Light night frosts are quite common, but the temperature seldom dips below −5 °C (23 °F). Paris sometimes sees light snow or flurries with or without accumulation. In summer, the weather is warm, averaging 22 °C (72 °F), and there is 8 hours of sunshine on average per day.

Paris has an average annual precipitation of 641 mm (25.2 in), and experiences light rainfall distributed evenly throughout the year. As of 2025, the highest recorded temperature was 42.6 °C (108.7 °F), on 25 July 2019. The lowest was −23.9 °C (−11.0 °F), on 10 December 1879.

Climate data for Paris (Parc Montsouris), elevation: 75 m (246 ft), 1991–2020 normals, extremes 1872–present
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	16.1 (61.0)	21.4 (70.5)	26.0 (78.8)	30.2 (86.4)	34.8 (94.6)	40.6 (105.1)	42.6 (108.7)	39.5 (103.1)	36.2 (97.2)	28.9 (84.0)	21.6 (70.9)	17.1 (62.8)	42.6 (108.7)
Mean daily maximum °C (°F)	7.6 (45.7)	8.8 (47.8)	12.8 (55.0)	16.6 (61.9)	20.2 (68.4)	23.4 (74.1)	25.7 (78.3)	25.6 (78.1)	21.5 (70.7)	16.5 (61.7)	11.1 (52.0)	8.0 (46.4)	16.5 (61.7)
Daily mean °C (°F)	5.4 (41.7)	6.0 (42.8)	9.2 (48.6)	12.2 (54.0)	15.6 (60.1)	18.8 (65.8)	20.9 (69.6)	20.8 (69.4)	17.2 (63.0)	13.2 (55.8)	8.7 (47.7)	5.9 (42.6)	12.8 (55.0)
Mean daily minimum °C (°F)	3.2 (37.8)	3.3 (37.9)	5.6 (42.1)	7.9 (46.2)	11.1 (52.0)	14.2 (57.6)	16.2 (61.2)	16.0 (60.8)	13.0 (55.4)	9.9 (49.8)	6.2 (43.2)	3.8 (38.8)	9.2 (48.6)
Record low °C (°F)	−14.6 (5.7)	−14.7 (5.5)	−9.1 (15.6)	−3.5 (25.7)	−0.1 (31.8)	3.1 (37.6)	6.0 (42.8)	6.3 (43.3)	1.8 (35.2)	−3.8 (25.2)	−14.0 (6.8)	−23.9 (−11.0)	−23.9 (−11.0)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	47.6 (1.87)	41.8 (1.65)	45.2 (1.78)	45.8 (1.80)	69.0 (2.72)	51.3 (2.02)	59.4 (2.34)	58.0 (2.28)	44.7 (1.76)	55.2 (2.17)	54.3 (2.14)	62.0 (2.44)	634.3 (24.97)
Average precipitation days (≥ 1.0 mm)	9.9	9.1	9.5	8.6	9.2	8.3	7.4	8.1	7.5	9.5	10.4	11.4	108.9
Average snowy days	3.0	3.9	1.6	0.6	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.7	2.1	11.9
Average relative humidity (%)	83	78	73	69	70	69	68	71	76	82	84	84	76
Mean monthly sunshine hours	59.0	83.7	134.9	177.3	201.0	203.5	222.4	215.3	174.7	118.6	69.8	56.9	1,717
Percentage possible sunshine	22	29	37	43	43	42	46	48	46	35	25	22	37
Average ultraviolet index	1	2	3	4	6	7	7	6	4	3	1	1	4
Source 1: Meteo France (snow days 1981–2010), Infoclimat.fr (relative humidity 1961–1990)
Source 2: Weather Atlas (percent sunshine and UV Index)

Administration

City government

For almost all of its long history, except for a few brief periods, Paris was governed directly by representatives of the king, emperor, or president of France. In 1974, Paris was granted municipal autonomy by the National Assembly. The first modern elected mayor of Paris was Jacques Chirac, elected in March 1977, becoming the city's first mayor since 1871 and only the fourth since 1794. The current mayor is Emmanuel Grégoire, a member of the Socialist Party, who was elected in 2026.

The mayor of Paris is elected indirectly by Paris voters. The voters of each of the city's 20 arrondissements elect members to the Conseil de Paris (Council of Paris), which elects the mayor. The council is composed of 163 members. Each arrondissement is allocated many seats, dependent upon its population, from 10 members for each of the least-populated arrondissements to 34 members for the most populated. The council is elected using closed list proportional representation in a two-round system.

Party lists winning an absolute majority in the first round – or at least a plurality in the second round – automatically win half the seats of an arrondissement. The remaining half of the seats are distributed proportionally to all lists which win at least 5% of the vote, using the highest averages method. This ensures that the winning party or coalition always wins a majority of the seats, even if they do not win an absolute majority of the vote.

Before the 2020 Paris municipal election, each of Paris's 20 arrondissements had its own town hall and a directly elected council (conseil d'arrondissement), which elects an arrondissement mayor. The council of each arrondissement is composed of members of the Conseil de Paris, and members who serve only on the council of the arrondissement. The number of deputy mayors in each arrondissement varies depending on its population. As of 1996, there were 20 arrondissement mayors and 120 deputy mayors. The creation of Paris Centre, a unified administrative division with a single mayor covering the first four arrondissements, took effect with the said 2020 election. The other 16 arrondissements continue to have their own mayors.

Métropole du Grand Paris

In January 2016, the Métropole du Grand Paris came into existence. It is an administrative structure for co-operation between the City of Paris and its nearest suburbs. It includes the City of Paris, plus the communes of the three departments of the inner suburbs, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, plus seven communes in the outer suburbs, including Argenteuil in Val d'Oise and Paray-Vieille-Poste in Essonne, which were added to include the major airports of Paris. The Metropole covers 814 km² (314 sq mi). In 2015, it had a population of 6.945 million people.

The new structure is administered by a Metropolitan Council of 210 members, not directly elected, but chosen by the councils of the member Communes. By 2020, its basic competencies will include urban planning, housing, and protection of the environment. In January 2016, Patrick Ollier was elected the first president of the metropolitan council. Though the Metropole has a population of nearly seven million people and accounts for 25 percent of the GDP of France, it has a very small budget: just 65 million Euros, compared with eight billion Euros for the City of Paris.

Regional government

The Region of Île de France, including Paris and its surrounding communities, is governed by the Regional Council, composed of 209 members representing the different communes. In December 2015, a list of candidates of the Union of the Right, a coalition of centrist and right-wing parties, led by Valérie Pécresse, narrowly won the regional election, defeating a coalition of Socialists and ecologists. The Socialists had governed the region for seventeen years. The regional council has 121 members from the Union of the Right, 66 from the Union of the Left and 22 from the extreme right National Front.

National government

As the capital of France, Paris is the seat of France's national government. For the executive, the two chief officers each have their own official residences, which also serve as their offices. The President of the French Republic resides at the Élysée Palace. The Prime Minister's seat is at the Hôtel Matignon. Government ministries are located in various parts of the city, many near the Hôtel Matignon.

Both houses of the French Parliament are located on the Rive Gauche. The upper house, the Senate, meets in the Palais du Luxembourg. The more important lower house, the National Assembly, meets in the Palais Bourbon. The President of the Senate, the second-highest public official in France, with the President of the Republic being the sole superior, resides in the Petit Luxembourg, a smaller palace annexe to the Palais du Luxembourg.

France's highest courts are located in Paris. The Court of Cassation, the highest court in the judicial order, which reviews criminal and civil cases, is located in the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité. The Conseil d'État, which provides legal advice to the executive and acts as the highest court in the administrative order, judging litigation against public bodies, is located in the Palais-Royal in the 1st arrondissement. The Constitutional Council, an advisory body with ultimate authority on the constitutionality of laws and government decrees, meets in the Montpensier wing of the Palais Royal.

Paris and its region host the headquarters of several international organisations, including UNESCO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Paris Club, the European Space Agency, the International Energy Agency, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the European Union Institute for Security Studies, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Exhibition Bureau, and the International Federation for Human Rights.

Police force

The security of Paris is mainly the responsibility of the Prefecture of Police of Paris, a subdivision of the Ministry of the Interior. It supervises the units of the National Police who patrol the city and the three neighbouring departments. It is also responsible for providing emergency services, including the Paris Fire Brigade. Its headquarters is on Place Louis Lépine on the Île de la Cité.

There are 43,800 officers under the prefecture, and a fleet of more than 6,000 vehicles, including police cars, motorcycles, fire trucks, boats, and helicopters. The national police has its own special unit for riot control and crowd control, and security of public buildings, called the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS). Vans of CRS agents are frequently seen in the centre of Paris when there are demonstrations and public events. The police are supported by the National Gendarmerie, a branch of the French Armed Forces. Their police operations are supervised by the Ministry of the Interior.

Crime in Paris is similar to that in most large cities. Violent crime is relatively rare in the city centre. Political violence is uncommon, though very large demonstrations may occur in Paris and other French cities simultaneously. These demonstrations, usually managed by a strong police presence, can turn confrontational and escalate into violence.

Cityscape

Urbanism and architecture

Paris is one of the few world capitals that has rarely seen destruction by catastrophe or war. As a result, even its earliest history is visible in its street map, and centuries of rulers adding their respective architectural marks on the capital have resulted in an accumulated wealth of history-rich monuments and buildings whose beauty plays a large part in giving Paris the reputation it has today. At its origin, before the Middle Ages, Paris was composed of several islands and sandbanks in a bend of the Seine. Of those, two remain today: Île Saint-Louis and the Île de la Cité. A third one is the 1827 artificially created Île aux Cygnes.

Modern Paris owes much of its downtown plan and architectural harmony to Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. Between 1853 and 1870 they rebuilt the city centre, created the wide downtown boulevards and squares where the boulevards intersected, imposed standard facades along the boulevards, and required that the facades be built of the distinctive cream-grey "Paris stone". They built the major parks around central Paris. The high residential population of the city centre makes Paris much different from most other major western cities.

Paris's urbanism laws have been under strict control since the early 17th century, particularly where street-front alignment, building height and building distribution is concerned. The 210 m (690 ft) Tour Montparnasse was both Paris's and France's tallest building from 1973 until 2011, when the record was taken by the La Défense district's Tour First in the commune of Courbevoie.

Housing

In 2018, the most expensive residential street in Paris by average price per square metre was Avenue Montaigne, at 22,372 euros per square metre. In 2011, the number of residences in the City of Paris was 1,356,074. Among these, 1,165,541 (85.9 percent) were main residences, 91,835 (6.8 percent) were secondary residences, and the remaining 7.3 percent were empty.

Sixty-two percent of buildings date from 1949 and before, with 20 percent built between 1949 and 1974. 18 percent of Paris buildings were built after 1974. Two-thirds of the city's 1.3 million residences are studio and two-room apartments. Paris averages 1.9 people per residence, a number that has remained constant since the 1980s, which is less than Île-de-France's 2.33 people-per-residence average. Only 33 percent of Parisian principal residents own their habitation, against 47 percent for the wider Île-de-France region. Most of Paris's population rents their residence. In 2017, social or public housing was 19.9 percent of Paris's residences. Its distribution varies widely throughout Paris, from 2.6 percent of the housing in the wealthy 7th arrondissement to 39.9 percent in the 19th arrondissement.

In February 2019, a Paris NGO conducted its annual citywide count of homeless persons. They counted 3,641 homeless persons in Paris, of whom twelve percent were women. More than half had been homeless for more than a year. 2,885 were living in the streets or parks, 298 in train and metro stations, and 756 in other forms of temporary shelter. This was an increase of 588 persons since 2018.

Suburbs

Aside from the 20th-century addition of the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes, and the Paris heliport, Paris's administrative limits have remained unchanged since 1860. A greater administrative Seine department had been governing Paris and its suburbs since its creation in 1790, but the rising suburban population had made it difficult to maintain as a unique entity. To address this problem, the parent "District de la région parisienne" ('district of the Paris region') was reorganised into several new departments from 1968: Paris became a department in itself, and the administration of its suburbs was divided between the three new departments surrounding it. The district of the Paris region was renamed "Île-de-France" in 1977, but this abbreviated "Paris region" name is still commonly used today to describe the Île-de-France, and as a vague reference to the entire Paris agglomeration. Long-intended measures to unite Paris with its suburbs began in January 2016, when the Métropole du Grand Paris came into existence.

Paris's disconnect with its suburbs, its lack of suburban transportation, in particular, became all too apparent with the Paris agglomeration's growth. Paul Delouvrier promised to resolve the Paris-suburbs mésentente when he became head of the Paris region in 1961. Two of his most ambitious projects for the Region were the construction of five suburban "villes nouvelles" ("new cities") and the RER commuter train network.

Many other suburban residential districts (grands ensembles) were built between the 1960s and 1970s to provide a low-cost solution for a rapidly expanding population. These districts were socially mixed at first, but few residents actually owned their homes. The growing economy made these accessible to the middle classes only from the 1970s. Their poor construction quality and their haphazard insertion into existing urban growth contributed to their desertion by those able to move elsewhere, and their repopulation by those with more limited resources.

These areas, quartiers sensibles ("sensitive quarters"), are in northern and eastern Paris, namely around its Goutte d'Or and Belleville neighbourhoods. To the north of Paris, they are grouped mainly in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, and to a lesser extent, to the east in the Val-d'Oise department. Other difficult areas are located in the Seine valley, in Évry et Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne), in Mureaux, Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), and scattered among social housing districts created by Delouvrier's 1961 "ville nouvelle" political initiative.

The Paris agglomeration's urban sociology is basically that of 19th-century Paris: the wealthy live in the west and southwest, and the middle-to-working classes are in the north and east. The remaining areas are mostly middle-class, dotted with wealthy islands in areas of historical importance, namely Saint-Maur-des-Fossés to the east and Enghien-les-Bains to the north of Paris.

Demographics

The population of the City of Paris was 2,102,650 in January 2023, down from 2,165,423 in January 2022. Between 2013 and 2023, the population fell by 122,919, or about five percent. The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, declared that this illustrated the "de-densification" of the city, creating more green space and less crowding. Despite the drop, Paris remains the most densely populated city in Europe, with 252 residents per hectare, not counting parks. This drop was attributed partly to a lower birth rate, the departure of middle-class residents, and the possible loss of housing in Paris, due to short-term rentals for tourism.

Paris is the fourth largest municipality in the European Union, after Berlin, Madrid and Rome, and is the 34th most densely populated city in the world as of 2020. Eurostat places Paris (6.5 million people) behind London (8 million) and ahead of Berlin (3.5 million), based on the 2012 populations of what Eurostat calls "urban audit core cities". The population of Paris today is lower than its historical peak of 2.9 million in 1921. The principal reasons are a significant decline in household size and a dramatic migration of residents to the suburbs between 1962 and 1975. Factors in the migration included de-industrialisation, high rent, the gentrification of many inner quarters, the transformation of living space into offices, and greater affluence among working families. Paris's population loss came to a temporary halt at the beginning of the 21st century. The population increased from 2,125,246 in 1999 to 2,240,621 in 2012, before declining again between 2012 and 2023.

Paris is the core of a built-up area that extends well beyond its limits: commonly referred to as the agglomération Parisienne, and statistically as a unité urbaine (a measure of urban area), the Paris agglomeration's population of 11,013,774 in 2023 made it the largest urban area in the European Union. City-influenced commuter activity reaches further, in a statistical aire d'attraction de Paris, ("functional area", a statistical method comparable to a metropolitan area), that had a population of 13,320,752 in 2023, 19.6% of the population of France, and the largest metropolitan area in the Eurozone.

In 2012, the Commune of Paris was the most densely populated city in the European Union. There were 21,616 people per square kilometre within the city limits, the NUTS-3 statistical area, ahead of Inner London West, which had 10,374 people per square kilometre. In the same census, three departments bordering Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, had population densities of over 10,000 people per square kilometre, ranking among the 10 most densely populated areas of the EU.

Migration

Under French law, people born in foreign countries with no French citizenship at birth are defined as immigrants. In the 2012 census, 135,853 residents of the City of Paris were immigrants from Europe, 112,369 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 70,852 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 5,059 from Turkey, 91,297 from Asia outside Turkey, 38,858 from the Americas, and 1,365 from the South Pacific.

In the Paris Region, 590,504 residents were immigrants from Europe, 627,078 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 435,339 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 69,338 from Turkey, 322,330 from Asia outside Turkey, 113,363 from the Americas, and 2,261 from the South Pacific.

In 2012, there were 8,810 British citizens and 10,019 United States citizens living in the City of Paris (Ville de Paris), and 20,466 British citizens and 16,408 United States citizens living in the entire Paris Region (Île-de-France).

In 2020–2021, about 6 million people, or 41% of the population of the Paris Region, were either immigrants (21%) or had at least one immigrant parent (20%). These figures do not include French people born in Overseas France and their direct descendants.

Religion

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Paris was the largest Catholic city in the world. French census data does not contain information about religious affiliation. In a 2011 survey by the Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP), a French public opinion research organisation, 61 percent of residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France) identified themselves as Roman Catholic. In the same survey, 7 percent of residents identified themselves as Muslims, 4 percent as Protestants, 2 percent as Jewish, and 25 percent as without religion.

According to the INSEE, between 4 and 5 million French residents were born, or had at least one parent born, in a predominantly Muslim country, particularly Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. An IFOP survey in 2008 reported that, of immigrants from these predominantly Muslim countries, 25 percent went to the mosque regularly. 41 percent practised the religion, and 34 percent were believers, but did not practice the religion. In 2012 and 2013, it was estimated that there were almost 500,000 Muslims in the City of Paris, 1.5 million Muslims in the Île-de-France region and 4 to 5 million Muslims in France.

In 2014, the Jewish population of the Paris Region was estimated to be 282,000, the largest concentration of Jews in the world outside of Israel and the United States.

Economy

The economy of the City of Paris is based largely on services and commerce. Of the 390,480 enterprises in Paris, 80.6 percent are engaged in commerce, transportation, and diverse services, 6.5 percent in construction, and 3.8 percent in industry. The story is similar in the Paris Region (Île-de-France): 76.7 percent of enterprises are engaged in commerce and services, and 3.4 percent in industry.

At the 2012 census, 59.5% of jobs in the Paris Region were in market services (12.0% in wholesale and retail trade, 9.7% in professional, scientific, and technical services, 6.5% in information and communication, 6.5% in transportation and warehousing, 5.9% in finance and insurance, 5.8% in administrative and support services, 4.6% in accommodation and food services, and 8.5% in various other market services), 26.9% in non-market services (10.4% in human health and social work activities, 9.6% in public administration and defence, and 6.9% in education), 8.2% in manufacturing and utilities (6.6% in manufacturing and 1.5% in utilities), 5.2% in construction, and 0.2% in agriculture.

The Paris Region had 5.4 million salaried employees in 2010, of whom 2.2 million were concentrated in 39 pôles d'emplois or business districts. The largest of these by number of employees is known in French as the QCA, or quartier central des affaires. In 2010, it was the workplace of 500,000 salaried employees, about 30 percent of the salaried employees in Paris and 10 percent of those in the Île-de-France. The largest sectors of activity in the central business district were finance and insurance (16 percent of employees in the district) and business services (15 percent). The district includes a large concentration of department stores, shopping areas, hotels and restaurants, as well a government offices and ministries.

The second-largest business district in terms of employment is La Défense, just west of the city. In 2010, it was the workplace of 144,600 employees, of whom 38 percent worked in finance and insurance, 16 percent in business support services. Two other important districts, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois-Perret, are extensions of the Paris business district and of La Défense. Another district, including Boulogne-Billancourt, Issy-les-Moulineaux and the southern part of the 15th arrondissement, is a centre of activity for the media and information technology.

In 2021, the top French companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 all have their headquarters in the Paris Region. Six are in the central business district of the City of Paris, four are close to the city in the Hauts-de-Seine Department, three are in La Défense, and one is in Boulogne-Billancourt. Some companies, like Société Générale, have offices in both Paris and La Défense. The Paris Region is France's leading region for economic activity, with a GDP of €865 billion, of which €280 billion was in Paris city. In 2021, its GDP ranked first among the metropolitan regions of the EU, and its per-capita GDP PPP was the 8th highest. While the Paris region's population accounted for 18.8 percent of metropolitan France in 2019, the Paris region's GDP accounted for 32 percent of metropolitan France's GDP.

The Paris Region economy has gradually shifted from industry to high-value-added service industries (finance, IT services) and high-tech manufacturing (electronics, optics, aerospace, etc.). The Paris region's most intense economic activity through the central Hauts-de-Seine department and suburban La Défense business district places Paris's economic centre to the west of the city, in a triangle between the Opéra Garnier, La Défense and the Val de Seine. While the Paris economy is dominated by services, and employment in manufacturing sector has declined sharply, the region remains an important manufacturing centre, particularly for aeronautics, automobiles, and eco industries.

In the 2017 worldwide cost of living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on a survey made in September 2016, Paris ranked as the seventh most expensive city in the world, and the second most expensive in Europe. In 2018, Paris was the most expensive city in the world along with Singapore and Hong Kong. Station F is a business incubator for startups, noted as the world's largest startup facility. In 2022, Paris was the city with the ninth-highest cost of living in the world.

Employment and income

In 2007, the majority of Paris's salaried employees filled 370,000 businesses services jobs, concentrated in the north-western 8th, 16th and 17th arrondissements. Paris's financial service companies are concentrated in the central-western 8th and 9th arrondissement banking and insurance district. Paris's department store district in the 1st, 6th, 8th, and 9th arrondissements employs ten percent of mostly female Paris workers, with 100,000 of these in the retail trade. Fourteen percent of Parisians worked in hotels and restaurants and other services to individuals.

Nineteen percent of Paris employees work for the State in either administration or education. The majority of Paris's healthcare and social workers work at the hospitals and social housing, concentrated in the peripheral 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements. Outside Paris, the western Hauts-de-Seine department La Défense district specialising in finance, insurance, and scientific research, employs 144,600. The north-eastern Seine-Saint-Denis audiovisual sector has 200 media firms and 10 major film studios.

Paris's manufacturing is mostly focused in its suburbs. Paris has around 75,000 manufacturing workers, most of whom are in the textile, clothing, leather goods, and shoe trades. In 2015, the Paris region's 800 aerospace companies employed 100,000. Four hundred automobile industry companies employ another 100,000 workers. Many of these are centred in the Yvelines department, around the Renault and PSA-Citroën plants. This department alone employs 33,000. In 2014, the industry as a whole suffered a major loss, with the closing of a major Aulnay-sous-Bois Citroën assembly plant.

The southern Essonne department specialises in science and technology. The south-eastern Val-de-Marne, with its wholesale Rungis food market, specialises in food processing and beverages. The Paris region's manufacturing decline is quickly being replaced by eco-industries. These employ about 100,000 workers.

Incomes are higher in the Western part of Paris and in the western suburbs, than in the northern and eastern parts of the urban area. While Paris has some of the richest neighbourhoods in France, it also has some of the poorest, mostly on the eastern side of the city. In 2012, 14 percent of households in Paris earned less than €977 per month, the official poverty line. Twenty-five percent of residents in the 19th arrondissement lived below the poverty line. In Paris's wealthiest neighbourhood, the 7th arrondissement, 7 percent lived below the poverty line. The unemployment rate in Paris in the 4th trimester of 2021 was six percent, compared with 7.4 percent in the whole of France. This was the lowest rate in thirteen years.

Tourism

As of 2024, Paris was considered the most attractive city in the world for 4 years in a row by the Euromonitor Global Cities Destination Index. However, by the number of tourists coming from other countries, it was only in 9th place.

Tourism continued to recover in the Paris region in 2022, increasing to 44 million visitors, an increase of 95 percent over 2021, but still 13 percent lower than in 2019.

Greater Paris, comprising Paris and its three surrounding departments, received a record 38 million visitors in 2019, measured by hotel arrivals. These included 12.2 million French visitors. Of the foreign visitors, the greatest number came from the United States (2.6 million), the United Kingdom (1.2 million), Germany (981 thousand), and China (711 thousand).

In 2018, Paris was the second-busiest airline destination in the world, with 19.10 million visitors, behind Bangkok (22.78 million) but ahead of London (19.09 million). In 2016, 393,008 workers in Greater Paris, or 12.4 percent of the total workforce, were engaged in tourism-related sectors such as hotels, catering, transport and leisure.

Paris's top cultural attractions in 2022 were the Louvre Museum (7.7 million visitors), the Eiffel Tower (5.8 million visitors), the Musée d'Orsay (3.27 million visitors) and the Centre Pompidou (3 million visitors).

In 2019, Greater Paris had 2,056 hotels, including 94 five-star hotels, with a total of 121,646 rooms. In 2019, in addition to the hotels, Greater Paris had 60,000 homes registered with Airbnb. Under French law, renters of these units must pay the Paris tourism tax. The company paid the city government 7.3 million euros in 2016.

A minuscule fraction of foreign visitors suffer from Paris syndrome, when their experiences do not meet expectations.

Culture

Painting and sculpture

For centuries, Paris has attracted artists from around the world. As a result, Paris has acquired a reputation as the "City of Art". Italian artists were a profound influence on the development of art in Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in sculpture and reliefs. Painting and sculpture became the pride of the French monarchy, and the French royal family commissioned many Parisian artists to adorn their palaces during the French Baroque and Classicism era. Sculptors such as Girardon, Coysevox, and Coustou acquired reputations as the finest artists in the royal court in 17th-century France. Pierre Mignard became the first painter to King Louis XIV during this period. In 1648, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) was established to accommodate the dramatic interest in art in the capital.

Paris was in its artistic prime in the 19th century and early 20th century, when it had a colony of artists established in the city and in art schools associated with some of the finest painters of the times: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and others. Paris was central to the development of Romanticism in art, with painters such as Géricault. Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism and Art Deco movements all evolved in Paris. In the late 19th century, many artists in the French provinces and worldwide flocked to Paris to exhibit their works in the numerous salons and expositions and make a name for themselves. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani became associated with Paris.

The most prestigious sculptors who made their reputation in Paris in the modern era are Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Statue of Liberty), Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Antoine Bourdelle, Paul Landowski (Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro) and Aristide Maillol. The Golden Age of the School of Paris ended between the two world wars.

Museums

The Louvre received 2.8 million visitors in 2021, holding its position as the world's most-visited museum. Its treasures include the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo statue, and Liberty Leading the People. The second-most visited museum, with 1.5 million visitors in 2021, was the Centre Georges Pompidou, also known as Beaubourg, which houses the Musée National d'Art Moderne. The National Museum of Natural History followed with 1.4 million visitors. It is famous for its dinosaur artefacts, mineral collections, and its Gallery of Evolution.

The Musée d'Orsay, featuring 19th-century art and the French Impressionists, had one million visitors. Paris hosts one of the largest science museums in Europe, the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie (984,000 visitors in 2020), and one of the oldest, the Musée des Arts et Métiers (opened in 1794). The other most-visited museums in 2021 were the Fondation Louis Vuitton (691,000), the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, featuring indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. (616,000); the Musée Carnavalet (History of Paris) (606,000), and the Petit Palais, the art museum of the City of Paris (518,000).

The Musée de l'Orangerie, near the Louvre and the Orsay, also exhibits Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including most of Claude Monet's large Water Lilies murals. The Musée national du Moyen Âge, or Cluny Museum, presents Medieval art. The Guimet Museum, or Musée national des arts asiatiques, has one of the largest collections of Asian art in Europe. There are also notable museums devoted to individual artists, including the Musée Picasso, the Musée Rodin, and the Musée national Eugène Delacroix.

The military history of France is presented by displays at the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides. In addition to the national museums, run by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris operates 14 museums, including the Carnavalet Museum on the history of Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo, the House of Victor Hugo, the House of Balzac and the Catacombs of Paris. There are also notable private museums. The Contemporary Art museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, designed by architect Frank Gehry, opened in October 2014 in the Bois de Boulogne.

Theatre

The largest opera houses of Paris are the 19th-century Opéra Garnier (historical Paris Opéra) and modern Opéra Bastille. The Opéra Garnier tends toward the more classic ballets and operas. The Paris Opéra provides a mixed repertoire of classic and modern. In the mid-19th century, there were three other active and competing opera houses: the Opéra-Comique (which still exists), Théâtre-Italien and Théâtre Lyrique (now the Théâtre de la Ville). Philharmonie de Paris, the modern symphonic concert hall of Paris, opened in January 2015. Another musical landmark is the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where the first performances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes took place in 1913.

Theatre traditionally has occupied a large place in Parisian culture, and many of its most popular actors today are also stars of French television. The oldest and most famous Paris theatre is the Comédie-Française, founded in 1680. Run by the Government of France, it performs mostly French classics at the Salle Richelieu in the Palais-Royal. Other famous theatres include the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, also a state institution and theatrical landmark; the Théâtre Mogador; and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse.

The music hall and cabaret are famous Paris institutions. The Moulin Rouge opened in 1889 and became the birthplace of the Cancan dance. It helped make famous the singers Mistinguett and Édith Piaf and the painter Toulouse-Lautrec, who made posters for the venue. In 1911, the dance hall Olympia Paris invented the grand staircase as a setting for its shows, competing with its great rival, the Folies Bergère.

The Casino de Paris presented many famous French singers, including Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier and Tino Rossi. Other famous Paris music halls include Le Lido, on the Champs-Élysées, opened in 1946; and the Crazy Horse Saloon, featuring strip-tease, dance, and magic, opened in 1951. A half dozen music halls exist today in Paris, attended mostly by visitors to the city.

Literature

The first book printed in France, Epistolae ("Letters"), by Gasparinus de Bergamo, was published in Paris in 1470 by the press established by Johann Heynlin. Paris has since been the centre of the French publishing industry, the home of some of the world's best-known writers and poets, and the setting for many classic works of French literature. Paris did not become the acknowledged capital of French literature until the 17th century, with authors such as Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, Charles Perrault, several coming from the provinces, as well as the foundation of the Académie française. In the 18th century, the literary life of Paris revolved around the cafés and salons; it was dominated by Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre de Marivaux, and Pierre Beaumarchais.

During the 19th century, Paris was the home and subject for some of France's greatest writers, including Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and Honoré de Balzac. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame inspired the renovation of its setting, the Notre-Dame de Paris. Another of Hugo's works, Les Misérables, described the social change and political turmoil in Paris in the early 1830s. One of the most popular of all French writers, Jules Verne, worked at the Theatre Lyrique and the Paris stock exchange while he did research for his stories at the National Library.

In the 20th century, the Paris literary community was dominated by figures such as Colette, André Gide, François Mauriac, André Malraux, Albert Camus, and, after World War II, by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Between the wars, it was the home of many important expatriate writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, and Arturo Uslar Pietri. The winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, Patrick Modiano, based most of his literary work on the depiction of the city during World War II and the 1960s–1970s.

In the 1970s, 80 percent of French-language publishing houses were found in Paris. It is also a city of small bookstores. There are about 150 bookstores in the 5th arrondissement alone, plus another 250 book stalls along the Seine. Small Paris bookstores are protected against competition from discount booksellers by French law; books, even e-books, cannot be discounted more than five percent below their publisher's cover price.

Music

In the late 12th century, a school of polyphony was established at Notre-Dame. Among the Trouvères of northern France, a group of Parisian aristocrats became known for their poetry and songs. Troubadours, from the south of France, were also popular. During the reign of François I, in the Renaissance era, the lute became popular in the French court. The French royal family and courtiers "disported themselves in masques, ballets, allegorical dances, recitals, and opera and comedy", and a national musical printing house was established. In the Baroque-era, noted composers included Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and François Couperin. The Conservatoire de Musique de Paris was founded in 1795. By 1870, Paris had become an important centre for symphony, ballet, and operatic music.

Romantic-era composers include Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns, Léo Delibes and Jules Massenet, among others. Georges Bizet's Carmen premiered in 1875 and has become one of the most popular operas in the classical canon. Among the Impressionist composers who created new works for piano, orchestra, opera, chamber music and other musical forms, stand in particular Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel. Several foreign-born composers, such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Jacques Offenbach, Niccolò Paganini, and Igor Stravinsky, established themselves or made significant contributions both with their works and their influence in Paris.

Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1870s; by 1880, Paris had some 150 dance halls. Patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a "musette") and the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy) in the cafés and bars of the city. Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars, and Paris became a major centre for jazz and still attracts jazz musicians from all around the world to its clubs and cafés. Paris is the spiritual home of gypsy jazz, and many of the Parisian jazzmen who developed in the first half of the 20th century began by playing Bal-musette in the city. Django Reinhardt rose to fame in Paris and performed with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and their Quintette du Hot Club de France in the 1930s and 1940s.

Immediately after the war, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter and the nearby Saint-Michel quarter became home to many small jazz clubs, including the Caveau des Lorientais, the Club Saint-Germain, the Rose Rouge, the Vieux-Colombier, and the most famous, Le Tabou. They introduced Parisians to the music of Claude Luter, Boris Vian, Sydney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, and Henri Salvador. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.

Some of the finest manouche musicians in the world are found here playing the cafés of the city at night. Some of the more notable jazz venues include the New Morning, Le Sunset, La Chope des Puces and Bouquet du Nord. Several yearly festivals take place in Paris, including the Paris Jazz Festival and the rock festival Rock en Seine. The Orchestre de Paris was established in 1967. Édith Piaf is widely regarded as France's national chanteuse and one of France's greatest international stars.

Paris has a big hip hop scene. This music became popular during the 1980s.

Cinema

The movie industry was born in Paris when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected the first motion picture for a paying audience at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895. Many of Paris's concert/dance halls were transformed into cinemas when the media became popular beginning in the 1930s. Paris's largest cinema room today is in the Grand Rex theatre with 2,700 seats. Big multiplex cinemas have been built since the 1990s. UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles, with 27 screens, MK2 Bibliothèque with 20 screens, and UGC Ciné Cité Bercy with 18 screens are among the largest.

Parisians tend to share the same movie-going trends as many of the world's global cities, with cinemas primarily dominated by Hollywood-generated film entertainment. French cinema comes a close second, with major directors (réalisateurs) such as Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luc Besson, and the more slapstick/popular genre with director Claude Zidi as an example.

Restaurants and cuisine

Since the late 18th century, Paris has been famous for its restaurants and haute cuisine, food meticulously prepared and artfully presented. La Taverne Anglaise, opened in 1786 in the arcades of the Palais-Royal by Antoine Beauvilliers; it became a model for future luxury Paris restaurants. The restaurant Le Grand Véfour in the Palais-Royal dates from the same period. The famous Paris restaurants of the 19th century, including the Café de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale, the Café Anglais, Maison Dorée and the Café Riche, were mostly located near the theatres on the Boulevard des Italiens. Several of the best-known restaurants in Paris today appeared during the Belle Époque, including Maxim's on Rue Royale, Ledoyen in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, and the Tour d'Argent on the Quai de la Tournelle.

Today, owing to Paris's cosmopolitan population, every French regional cuisine and almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there; the city has more than 9,000 restaurants. The Michelin Guide has been a standard guide to French restaurants since 1900, awarding its highest award, three stars, to the best restaurants in France. In 2018, of the 27 Michelin three-star restaurants in France, ten are located in Paris. These include both restaurants that serve classical French cuisine, such as L'Ambroisie, and those that serve non-traditional menus, such as L'Astrance, which combines French and Asian cuisines. Several of France's most famous chefs, including Pierre Gagnaire, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno, and Alain Passard, have three-star restaurants in Paris.

Paris has several other kinds of traditional eating places. The café arrived in Paris in the 17th century, and by the 18th century, Parisian cafés were centres of the city's political and cultural life. The Café Procope on the Left Bank dates from this period. In the 20th century, the cafés of the Left Bank, especially Café de la Rotonde and Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse and Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint Germain, all still in business, were important meeting places for painters, writers and philosophers.

A bistro is a type of eating place loosely defined as a neighbourhood restaurant with a modest decor and prices and a regular clientele, and a congenial atmosphere. Real bistros are increasingly rare in Paris, due to rising costs, competition, and different eating habits of Parisian diners. A brasserie originally was a tavern located next to a brewery, which served beer and food at any hour. Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1867, it became a popular kind of restaurant which featured beer and other beverages served by young women in the national costume associated with the beverage. Now, brasseries, like cafés, serve food and drinks throughout the day.

Fashion

Since the 19th century, Paris has been an international fashion capital, particularly in the domain of haute couture (clothing hand-made to order for private clients). It is home to some of the largest fashion houses in the world, including Dior and Chanel, as well as many other well-known and more contemporary fashion designers, such as Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Christian Lacroix. Paris Fashion Week, held in January and July in the Carrousel du Louvre among other renowned city locations, is one of the top four events on the international fashion calendar.

Paris is also the home of the world's largest cosmetics company, L'Oréal, as well as three of the top five global makers of luxury fashion accessories: Louis Vuitton, Hermés, and Cartier. Most of the major fashion designers have their showrooms along the Avenue Montaigne, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine.

Photography

The inventor Nicéphore Niépce produced the first permanent photograph on a polished pewter plate in Paris in 1825. In 1839, Louis Daguerre patented the Daguerreotype, which became the most common form of photography until the 1860s. The work of Étienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s contributed considerably to the development of modern photography. Photography came to occupy a central role in Parisian Surrealist activity, in the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard.

Numerous photographers achieved renown for their photography of Paris, including Eugène Atget, noted for his depictions of street scenes; Robert Doisneau, noted for his playful pictures of people and market scenes (among which Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville has become iconic of the romantic vision of Paris); Marcel Bovis, noted for his night scenes; Jacques-Henri Lartigue; and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Poster art also became an important art form in Paris in the late nineteenth century, through the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Eugène Grasset, Adolphe Willette, Pierre Bonnard, Georges de Feure, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Paul Gavarni and Alphonse Mucha.

Media

Paris and its close suburbs are home to numerous newspapers, magazines and publications including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Canard enchaîné, La Croix, Le Parisien (in Saint-Ouen), Les Échos, Paris Match (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Réseaux & Télécoms, Reuters France, l'Équipe (Boulogne-Billancourt) and L'Officiel des Spectacles. France's two most prestigious newspapers, Le Monde and Le Figaro, are the centrepieces of the Parisian publishing industry. Agence France-Presse is France's oldest continually operating news agency and is headquartered in Paris. France 24 is a television news channel owned and operated by the French government. France Diplomatie, owned and operated by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, pertains solely to diplomatic news and occurrences.

The most-viewed network in France, TF1, is in nearby Boulogne-Billancourt. France 2, France 3, Canal+, France 5, M6 (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Arte, D8, W9, NT1, NRJ 12, La Chaîne parlementaire, France 4, BFM TV, and Gulli are other stations located in and around the capital. Radio France, France's public radio broadcaster, and its various channels, is headquartered in Paris's 16th arrondissement. Radio France Internationale, another public broadcaster, is also based in the city. Paris also holds the headquarters of the La Poste, France's national postal carrier.

Holidays and festivals

Bastille Day, a celebration of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the biggest festival in the city, is a military parade taking place every year on 14 July on the Champs-Élysées, from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. It includes a flypast over the Champs Élysées by the Patrouille de France, a parade of military units and equipment, and a display of fireworks in the evening, the most spectacular being the one at the Eiffel Tower.

Other yearly festivals include Paris-Plages, a festive summertime event when the Right Bank of the Seine is converted into a temporary beach; Journées du Patrimoine, Fête de la Musique, Techno Parade, Nuit Blanche, Cinéma au clair de lune, Printemps des rues, Festival d'automne, and Fête des jardins. The Carnaval de Paris, one of the oldest festivals in Paris, dates back to the Middle Ages.

Libraries

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) operates public libraries in Paris, among them the François Mitterrand Library, Richelieu Library, Louvois, Opéra Library, and Arsenal Library.

The Bibliothèque Forney, in the Marais district, is dedicated to the decorative arts; the Arsenal Library occupies a former military building, and has a large collection on French literature; and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, also in Le Marais, contains the Paris historical research service. The Sainte-Geneviève Library, designed by Henri Labrouste and built in the mid-1800s, contains a rare book and manuscript division. Bibliothèque Mazarine is the oldest public library in France. The Médiathèque Musicale Mahler opened in 1986 and contains collections related to music. The François Mitterrand Library (nicknamed Très Grande Bibliothèque) was completed in 1994 to a design of Dominique Perrault and contains four glass towers.

There are several academic libraries and archives in Paris. The Sorbonne Library is the largest university library in Paris. In addition to the Sorbonne location, there are branches in Malesherbes, Clignancourt-Championnet, Michelet-Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, Serpente-Maison de la Recherche, and Institut des Etudes Ibériques. Other academic libraries include Interuniversity Pharmaceutical Library, Leonardo da Vinci University Library, Paris School of Mines Library, and the René Descartes University Library.

Sports

Paris's major sports clubs are the association football club Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) and the rugby union clubs Stade Français and Racing 92. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis. It is used for football, rugby union, and track and field athletics. It hosts the France national football team for friendlies and major tournaments qualifiers, the French national rugby team's home matches of the Six Nations Championship, and several important matches of the Stade Français rugby team. The city and closer suburbs have several other professional and amateur football clubs, including Paris FC and Red Star FC.

Rugby league is not as popular in Paris as in other areas of France. Despite this, the capital has hosted several major events in the sport's history since the country's first game, an exhibition match between the Australia national team and a British League Select XIII, in December 1933. The Rugby League World Cup was first held in 1954 with the Parc des Princes hosting the opening match and the final in which France finished as runners-up to Great Britain. The newly rebuilt Parc des Princes was later used for a group game of the 1972 Rugby League World Cup. A rugby league department of PSG was created to participate in the Super League. In 2006, Catalans Dragons became the first French side to enter the British rugby league system following PSG's withdrawal.

Paris was the first city to host the Summer Olympics twice and the second to host three times, hosting in 1900, 1924 and 2024. The city also hosted the finals of the 1938 FIFA World Cup, 1998 FIFA World Cup, 2007 Rugby World Cup and 2023 Rugby World Cup, at the Stade de France. Paris hosted the finals of the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships. Paris held six UEFA Champions League finals, including the 2022 edition.

The final stage of the Tour de France finishes in Paris; since 1975, the race has finished on the Champs-Elysées. Two annual tennis tournaments are held in Paris: the French Open, held every year on the red clay of the Stade Roland Garros, one of the four Grand Slam events of the world professional tennis tour, and the Paris Masters, held in the Bercy Arena.

Basketball teams Levallois SCB and Paris Basket Racing merged in 2007 to create club Metropolitans 92, which plays some of its games at the Stade Pierre de Coubertin. Paris also features Paris Basketball in Basketball, Paris Saint-Germain in handball and Paris Musketeers in American football.

Infrastructure

Transport

Paris is a major rail, highway, and air transport hub. The Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) oversees the transit network in the region. The syndicate coordinates public transport. The RATP operates 347 bus lines, the Métro, eight tramway lines, and sections of the RER. The SNCF operates suburban rails, one tramway line, and other sections of the RER. The Optile consortium of private operators manages 1,176 bus lines.

Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems in the world and is one of only two cities that received the Sustainable Transport Award twice, in 2008 and 2023. In 2022–2023, 53.3% of trips in Paris were made on foot, 30% on public transport, 11.2% on bicycles and 4.3% on cars. Paris has banned the most polluting automobiles from key districts and is doubling bike lanes. The concept of the 15-minute city was created by Carlos Moreno, a professor from Paris, and began to be implemented by its mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Walking

Paris is a highly walkable city and tries to increase its mode share beyond 53% of all trips in 2024. The number of trips made by foot in the Grand Paris metropolis increased by 50% from 2000 to 2018.

Railways

A central hub of the national rail network, Paris's six major railway stations (Gare du Nord, Gare de l'Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d'Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse, Gare Saint-Lazare) and a minor one (Gare de Bercy) are connected to three networks: high-speed rail lines (TGV inOui, TGV Lyria, TGV Ouigo, Eurostar, Intercity Express, Frecciarossa), normal speed trains (Intercités, Ouigo Train Classique, Intercités de nuit, European Sleeper, TER), and the suburban rails (Transilien). The Transilien is the commuter rail network serving Paris region, through 9 lines, 392 stations and 1,294 km (804.1 mi) of rails.

Since the inauguration of its first line in 1900, Paris's Métro network has grown to become the city's most widely used local transport system. In 2015, it carried about 5.23 million passengers daily. There are 16 lines, 321 stations (405 stops) and 245.6 km (152.6 mi) of rails. Superimposed on this is a regional express network, the RER, whose five lines, 257 stops, and 602 km (374 mi) of rails connect Paris to more distant parts of the urban area. With over 1.4 million passengers per day, RER A is the busiest metro line in Europe. The Paris region is served by a light rail network, the tramway. Opened in 1992, fifteen lines are now operational, spanning 196.6 kilometres (122.2 mi) with 283 stations.

Air

Paris is served by three commercial international airports: Charles de Gaulle Airport, the third-busiest airport in Europe as of 2018, Orly Airport and Beauvais–Tillé Airport. In 2019, these three airports recorded traffic of 112 million passengers, making them the 5th busiest airport system in the world. There is also one general aviation airport, Paris–Le Bourget Airport, historically the oldest Parisian airport and closest to the city centre, which is now used only for private business flights and air shows. Charles de Gaulle Airport, located on the edge of the northern suburbs of Paris, opened to commercial traffic in 1974 and became the busiest Parisian airport in 1993. In 2023, it was the 4th busiest airport in the world by international traffic and it is the hub for the nation's flag carrier, Air France. Beauvais-Tillé Airport, located 69 km (43 mi) north of Paris's city centre, is used by charter airlines and low-cost carriers.

Motorways

Paris is the most important hub of France's motorway network, and is surrounded by three orbital freeways: the Périphérique, which follows the approximate path of 19th-century fortifications around Paris, the A86 motorway in the inner suburbs, and the Francilienne motorway in the outer suburbs. Paris has an extensive road network with over 2,000 km (1,243 mi) of highways and motorways.

Waterways

The Paris region is the most active water transport area in France. Most of the cargo is handled by the Ports of Paris, in facilities located around Paris. The rivers Loire, Rhine, Rhône, Meuse, and Scheldt can be reached by canals connecting with the Seine, which include the Canal Saint-Martin, Canal Saint-Denis, and the Canal de l'Ourcq.

Cycling

As of 2025 there were 1,565 km (972 mi) of cycle paths and routes in Paris. These include piste cyclable, bike lanes separated from other traffic by physical barriers, and bande cyclable, a bicycle lane denoted by a painted path on the road. Some 29 km (18 mi) of specially marked bus lanes are free for use by cyclists, with a protective barrier against encroachments from vehicles. Cyclists have the right to ride in both directions on certain one-way streets. Paris has a bike sharing system called Vélib' with more than 20,000 public bicycles distributed at 1,800 parking stations.

Electricity

In 2012, around 50% of electricity generated in the Île-de-France came from cogeneration energy plants. Other energy sources included thermal power (35%), waste incineration (9% – with cogeneration plants, these provide the city with heat as well), methane gas (5%), hydraulics (1%), and solar power (0.1%). A quarter of the city's district heating is to come from a plant in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, burning a 50/50-mix of coal and wood pellets.

Water and sanitation

Paris in its early history had only the rivers Seine and Bièvre for water. From 1809, the Canal de l'Ourcq provided Paris with water from less-polluted rivers to the north-east of the capital. From 1857, the civil engineer Eugène Belgrand, under Napoleon III, oversaw the construction of a series of new aqueducts that brought water from locations all around the city to several reservoirs.

From then on, the new reservoir system became Paris's principal source of drinking water. The remains of the old system, pumped into lower levels of the same reservoirs, were from then on used for the cleaning of Paris's streets. This system is still a major part of Paris's water-supply network. Today, Paris has more than 2,400 km (1,491 mi) of underground sewers.

Air pollution in Paris, from the point of view of particulate matter (PM10), is the highest in France with 38 μg/m³. Paris has one of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in the EU.

Parks and gardens

Paris has more than 421 municipal parks and gardens, covering more than 3,000 hectares and containing more than 250,000 trees. Two of Paris's oldest and most famous gardens are the Tuileries Garden, created in 1564 for the Tuileries Palace and redone by André Le Nôtre between 1664 and 1672, and the Luxembourg Garden, for the Luxembourg Palace, built for Marie de' Medici in 1612, which today houses the Senate. The Jardin des plantes was the first botanical garden in Paris, created in 1626.

Between 1853 and 1870, Emperor Napoleon III and the city's first director of parks and gardens, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, created the Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes, Parc Montsouris and Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, located at the four compass points around Paris, as well as many smaller parks, squares and gardens in the Paris's quarters. Since 1977, the city has created 166 new parks, most notably the Parc de la Villette (1987), Parc André Citroën (1992), Parc de Bercy (1997) and Parc Clichy-Batignolles (2007). One of the newest parks, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine (2013), has floating gardens.

Cemeteries

During the Roman era, Paris's main cemetery was located on the outskirts of the left bank settlement. This changed with the rise of Catholic Christianity, where almost every inner-city church had adjoining burial grounds for use by their parishes. With Paris's growth, many of these, particularly the city's largest cemetery, the Holy Innocents' Cemetery, were filled to overflowing. When inner-city burials were condemned from 1786, the contents of all Paris's parish cemeteries were transferred to a renovated section of Paris's stone mines, today place Denfert-Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement.

After a tentative creation of several smaller suburban cemeteries, the Prefect Nicholas Frochot under Napoleon Bonaparte provided a more definitive solution in the creation of three massive Parisian cemeteries outside the city limits. Open from 1804, these were the cemeteries of Père Lachaise, Montmartre, Montparnasse, and later Passy. New suburban cemeteries were created in the early 20th century: The largest of these are the Cimetière parisien de Saint-Ouen, the Cimetière parisien de Pantin, also known as Cimetière parisien de Pantin-Bobigny, the Cimetière parisien d'Ivry, and the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux. Famous people buried in Parisian cemeteries include Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.

Education

In 2009, around 40 percent of Parisians held a licence-level diploma or higher, the highest proportion in France. 13 percent have no diploma, the third-lowest percentage in France. Education in Paris and the Île-de-France region employs approximately 330,000 people, 170,000 of whom are teachers and professors, teaching approximately 2.9 million students in around 9,000 primary, secondary, and higher education schools and institutions.

The University of Paris, founded in the 12th century, is often called the Sorbonne after one of its original medieval colleges. In 1970, it was broken up into thirteen autonomous universities following the student demonstrations in 1968. Most of the campuses today are in the Latin Quarter, where the old university was located, while others are scattered around the city and the suburbs.

The Paris region hosts France's highest concentration of the grandes écoles – 55 specialised centres of higher education outside or inside the public university structure. The prestigious public universities are usually considered grands établissements. Most of the grandes écoles were relocated to the suburbs of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, in new campuses much larger than the old campuses within the crowded City of Paris. The École Normale Supérieure, PSL University has remained on rue d'Ulm in the 5th arrondissement.

Paris is the home of prestigious universities in science and technology (Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Polytechnic Institute of Paris, Paris Cité University, Paris-Saclay University, Sorbonne University), political science (Sciences Po), management (ESSEC Business School, ESCP Business School, INSEAD) as well as multidisciplinary universities (Paris Sciences et Lettres University).

Healthcare

Health care and emergency medical service in the City of Paris and its suburbs are provided by the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), a public hospital system that employs more than 90,000 people, including practitioners, support personnel, and administrators, in 44 hospitals. It is the largest hospital system in Europe. The hospitals receive more than 5.8 million annual patient visits.

One of the most notable hospitals is the Hôtel-Dieu, founded in 651, the oldest hospital in Paris and the oldest worldwide still operating, although the current building is the product of a reconstruction of 1877. Other hospitals include Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, one of the largest in Europe, Hôpital Cochin, Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital, Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou, Bicêtre Hospital, Beaujon Hospital, the Curie Institute, Lariboisière Hospital, Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital, Hôpital Saint-Louis, Hôpital de la Charité and the American Hospital of Paris.

International relations

International organisations

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has had its headquarters in Paris since November 1958. Paris is also the home of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Paris hosts the headquarters of the European Space Agency, the International Energy Agency, European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Banking Authority.

Twin towns – sister cities

Since April 1956, Paris is exclusively and reciprocally twinned with Rome, Italy.

Seule Paris est digne de Rome; seule Rome est digne de Paris. (in French)
Solo Parigi è degna di Roma; solo Roma è degna di Parigi. (in Italian)
"Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris."

Other relationships

Paris has agreements of friendship and co-operation with:

• Algiers, 2003
• Amman, 1987
• Amsterdam, 2013
• Athens, 2000
• Beijing, 1997
• Beirut, 1992
• Berlin, 1987
• Brazzaville, 2015
• Buenos Aires, 1999
• Cairo, 1985
• Casablanca, 2004
• Chicago, 1996
• Copenhagen, 2005
• Dakar, 2011
• Doha, 2010
• Geneva, 2002
• Istanbul, 2009
• Jakarta, 1995
• Jericho, 2009
• Kinshasa, 2014
• Kyoto, 1958
• Lisbon, 1998
• London, 2001
• Madrid, 2000
• Mexico City, 1999
• Montevideo, 2013
• Montreal, 2006
• Moscow, 1992
• Phnom Penh, 2007
• Porto Alegre, 2001
• Prague, 1997
• Quebec City, 1996
• Rabat, 2004
• Ramallah, 2011
• Rio de Janeiro, 2009
• Riyadh, 1997
• Saint Petersburg, 1997
• Sanaa, 1987
• San Francisco, 1996
• Santiago, 1997
• São Paulo, 2004
• Seoul, 1991
• Sofia, 1998
• Sydney, 1998
• Tbilisi, 1997
• Tel Aviv, 2010
• Tokyo, 1982
• Tunis, 2004
• Warsaw, 1999
• Washington, D.C., 2000
• Yerevan, 1998

See also

• Art Nouveau in Paris
• Art Deco in Paris
• C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
• International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts held in Paris in 1925
• Megacity
• Outline of France
• Outline of Paris
• Paris syndrome
• Parish and Civil Registers in Paris

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Paris — Archdiocese of Paris (Parisiensis). Paris comprises the Department of the Seine. It was re-established by the Concordat of 1802 with much narrower limits than it had prior to the Revolution, when, besides the city of Paris and its suburbs, it comprised the archdeanery of Josas (including the deaneries of Châteaufort and Montlhéry) and the archdeanery of Brie (including the deaneries of Lagny and Vieux-Corbeil). The deanery of Champeaux, enclosed within the territory of the Diocese of Sens, was also dependent on the Archdiocese of Paris, which had then 492 parishes. The Concordat gave to the dioceses of Versailles and Meaux the archdeaneries of Josas and Brie, which had nearly 350 parishes, and reduced the Archdiocese of Paris to 42 urban and 76 suburban parishes. According to the Concordat it had eight suffragans: Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, Orléans, Meaux, Soissons, Troyes and Versailles. The re-establishment under the Restoration of the Archdioceses of Reims and Sens removed the Dioceses of Troyes, Amiens, and Soissons from the jurisdiction of Paris, but the Dioceses of Blois and Chartres, created in 1882, were attached to the Province of Paris. In 1841 Cambrai, having become a metropolitan see, ceased to be a suffragan of Paris, Arras being made its suffragan.

THE ROMAN LUTETIA 

The Gaul Camulogenus burnt Lutetia in 52 B. C., while defending against Cæsar the tribe of the Parisii, whose capital it was. The Romans erected a new city on the left slope of Mt. Lucotilius (later Mont Ste-Geneviève). That the Romanization of Paris was very quickly accomplished is proved:

• (1) by the altar (discovered in 1710 under the choir of Notre-Dame) raised to Jupiter under Tiberius by the Nautœ Parisiaci, on which are represented several deities borrowed from the Roman pantheon;

• (2) by the remains of a pedestal (found in 1871 on the site of the old Hôtel-Dieu), which doubtless supported a statue of Germanicus, and on which is represented Janus Quadrifrons, the Roman symbol of peace.

At the end of the third century Lutetia was destroyed by the barbarians, but an important military camp was at once installed in this district. Cæsar Julian, later emperor and known as Julian the Apostate, defended Lutetia against fresh invasions from the north over the road from Senlis to Orléans. There, in 360, he was proclaimed Augustus by his soldiers, and Valentian I also sojourned there. The ruins found in the garden of the Musée de Cluny have, since the twelfth century, been regarded as the ruins of the Thermœ, but in 1903-04 other thermœ were discovered a little distance away, which must be either those of the palace of Julian the Apostate, or, according to M. Julian, those of the communal house of the Nautœ Parisiaci. Ruins have also been discovered of an arena capable of holding from 8000 to 9000 persons.

BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY AT PARIS 

Paris was a Christian centre at an early date, its first apostles being St. Denis and his companions, Sts. Rusticus and Eleutherius. Until the Revolution the ancient tradition of the Parisian Church commemorated the seven stations of St. Denis, the stages of his apostolate and martyrdom:

• (1) the ancient monastery of Notre-Dame-des-Champs of which the crypt, it was said, had been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin by St. Denis on his arrival in Paris;

• (2) the Church of St-Etienne-des-Grès (now disappeared), which stood on the site of an oratory erected by St. Denis to St. Stephen;

• (3) the Church of St-Benoît (disappeared), where St. Denis had erected an oratory to the Trinity (Deus Benedictus);

• (4) the chapel of St-Denis-du-Pas near Notre-Dame (disappeared), on the site of the tribunal of the prefect Sicinnius, who tried St. Denis;

• (5) the Church of St-Denis-de-la-Châtre, the crypt of which was regarded as the saint's cell (now vanished);

• (6) Mont-martre, where, according to the chronicle written in 836 by Abbot Hilduin, St. Denis was executed;

• (7) the basilica of St-Denis (see below).

The memorials of the saint's activity in Paris have thus survived, but even the date of his apostolate is a matter of controversy. The legend stating St. Denis came to Gaul in the time of St. Clement, dates only from the end of the eighth century. It is found in the "Passio Dionisii", written about 800, and in the "Gesta Dagoberti", written at the Abbey of St-Denis at the beginning of the ninth century. Still later than the formation of this legend Abbot Hilduin identified St. Denis of Paris with Denis the Areopagite (see DIONYSIUS THE PSEUDO-AREOPAGITE), but this identification is no longer admitted, and history is inclined to accept the opinion of St. Gregory of Tours, who declares St. Denis one of the seven bishops sent by Pope Fabian about 250. It is certain that the Christian community of Paris was of some importance in the third century. Recent discoveries seem to prove that the catacombs of the Gobelins and of St. Marcellus on the left bank were the oldest necropolis of Paris; here have been found nearly 500 tombs, of which the oldest date from the end of the third century. Doubtless in this quarter was situated the church spoken of by St. Gregory of Tours as the oldest in the city; here was the sarcophagus of the virgin Crescentia, granted that our hypothesis agrees with a legend referring to this region the foundation of the chapel under the patronage of Pope St. Clement, in which Bishop St. Marcellus was buried in the fifth century. This bishop, who was a native of Paris, governed the Church of Paris about 430; he is celebrated in popular tradition for his victory over a dragon, and his life was written by Fortunatus.

MEROVINGIAN PARIS 

Paris was preserved from the invasion of Attila through the prayers and activity of St. Genevieve, who prevailed on the Parisians not to abandon their city. Clovis, King of the Franks, was received there in 497 after his conversion to Christianity, and made it his capital. The coming of the Franks brought about its great religious development. At the summit of the hill on the left bank Clovis founded, in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul, a basilica to which the tomb of St. Genevieve drew numbers of the faithful, and in which St. Clotilde, who died at Tours, was buried. On the right bank were built as early as the fifth century two churches consecrated to St. Martin of Tours - one near the present Notre-Dame, the other further in the country, in the place where the Church of St-Martin-des-Champs now stands. Childebert (died 558), son of Clovis, having become King of Paris in 511, added to the religious prestige of the city. After his campaign in Spain, he made peace with the inhabitants of Saragossa on condition that they would deliver to him the sacred vessels and the stole of St. Vincent, and on his return, at the instance of St. Germain (q. v.), built a church in honour of St. Vincent, which later took the name of Germain himself. The present church of St-Germain-des-Prés still preserves some columns from the triforium, which must date from the first building. After the death of Caribert, son of Clotaire I (567), Paris was not divided among the other sons of Clotaire, but formed a sort of municipal republic under the direction of St. Germain. Owing to this exceptional situation Paris escaped almost entirely the consequences of the civil wars with which the sons of Clotaire, and later Fredegunde and Brunhilde, disturbed Merovingian France. Mgr Duchesne concedes a certain authority to an ancient catalogue of the bishops of Paris, preserved in a sacramentary dating from the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century. After St. Germain other bishops of the Merovingian period were: St. Céran (Ceraunus, 606-21), who collected and compiled the Acts of the Martyrs, and during whose episcopate a council of seventy-nine bishops (the first national council of France) was held at the basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul; St. Landry (650-6), who founded under the patronage of St. Christopher the first charity hospital (Hôtel-Dieu) of Paris, and who caused the monk Marculf to compile, under the name of "Recueil de Formules", the first French and Parisian code, which is a real monument of the legislation of the seventh century; St. Agilbert (666-80), who was the brother of St. Theodechilde, first Abbess of Jouarre, and who had, during his youth in England, instructed in Christianity the King of the Saxons; St. Hugues (722-30), nephew of Charles Martel, previously Archbishop of Rouen and Abbot of Fontenelle.

PARIS UNDER THE CARLOVINGIANS 

The Carlovingian period opened with the episcopate of Déodefroi (757-75), who received Pope Stephen at Paris. Special mention must be made of Æneas (appointed bishop in 853 or 858; died 870), who wrote against Photius, under the title "Libellus adversus Græcos", a collection of texts from the Fathers on the Holy Ghost, fasting, and the Roman primacy. As the Carlovingians most frequently resided on the banks of the Meuse or the Rhine, the bishops of Paris greatly increased their political influence, though confronted by counts who represented the absent sovereigns. The bishops were masters of most of the Ile de la Cité and of a considerable portion of the right bank, near St-Germain-l'Auxerrois. As early as the ninth century the property of the chapter of Notre-Dame, established (775-95) by Bishop Erchenrade, was distinct from that of the diocese, while the cloister and the residences of the canons were quite independent of the royal power. Notre-Dame and the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés were then two great economic powers which sent through the kingdom their agents (missi negociantes), charged with making purchases. When the Normans entered Paris in 845 or 846, the body of St. Germain was hurriedly removed. They established themselves in the abbey, but left on payment of 7000 livres, whereupon the saint's body was brought back with great pomp. Another Norman invasion in 850 or 856 again occasioned the removal of St. Germain's body, which was restored in 863. Other alarms came in 865 and 876, but the worst attack took place on 24 Nov., 885, when Paris was defended by its bishop, the celebrated Gozlin, a Benedictine and former Abbot of St-Germain-des-Prés, and by Count Eudes of Paris, later King of France. The siege lasted a year, of which an account in Latin verse was written by the monk Abbo Cernuus. Gozlin died in the breach on 16 April, 886. His nephew Ebles, Abbot of St-Germain, was also among the valiant defenders of the city. The Parisians called upon Emperor Charles the Fat to assist them, and he paid the Normans a ransom, and even gave them permission to ascend the Seine through the city to pillage Burgundy; the Parisians refused to let them pass, however, and the Normans had to drag their boats around the walls. After the deposition of Charles the Fat, Eudes, who had defended Paris against the Normans, became king, and repelled another Norman attack, assisted by Gozlin's successor, Bishop Anscheric (886-91). After the death of Eudes the Parisians recognized his brother Robert, Count of Paris and Duke of France, and then Hugh the Great. Hugh Capet, son of Hugh the Great, prevented Paris from falling into the hands of the troops of Emperor Otto II in 978; in 987 he founded the Capetian dynasty.

PARIS UNDER THE CAPETIANS 

"To form a conception of Paris in the tenth and eleventh centuries", writes M. Marcel Poète, "we must picture to ourselves a network of churches and monasteries surrounded by cultivated farm-lands on the present site of Paris." Take, for example, the monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs, which in 1079 was attached to the Order of Cluny; about this monastery and its hospice was grouped a real agricultural colony, while all trades were practised in the monastic school. The same was true of the monastery of Sts. Barthélemy and Magloire, which was celebrated at the beginning of the Capetian period, and was dependent on the Abbey of Marmoutiers (see TOURS). But a still more famous monastic establishment was the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés. Its estates of Issy and of Celle-St-Cloud were vast possessions, and the polyptych (record of the monastic possessions), drawn up at the beginning of the ninth century under the direction of Abbot Irminon, shows how these estates, which extended into Indre and Normandy, were administered and cultivated. The first Capetians generally resided at Paris. Louis the Fat quarrelled with Bishop Etienne de Senlis (1124-42). The bishop placed the royal domain under interdict, whereupon the king confiscated the temporalities of the diocese, but the intervention of the pope and of St. Bernard put an end to the difference, and to seal the reconciliation, the king invited the bishop to the coronation of his son, Louis VII. The episcopal court of Peter Lombard (1157 or 1159 to 1160 or 1164) contributed to the scholarly reputation of the Church of Paris. The University of Paris did not yet exist, but, from the beginning of the twelfth century, the monastic schools of Notre-Dame were already famous, and the teaching of Peter Lombard, known as the Master of the Sentences, added to their lustre. Louis VI declared in a diploma that he had passed "his childhood in the schools of Notre-Dame as in the maternal bosom". At Notre-Dame William of Champeaux (q. v.) had taught dialectics, been a professor, and become an archdeacon, and had Abelard as a disciple before he founded the school of St-Victor in 1108. Until about 1127 the students of Notre-Dame resided within the chapter enclosure. By a command of Alexander III the principle of gratuitous instruction was asserted. In a letter written between 1154 and 1182 Philippe de Harvengt says: "There is at Paris such an assemblage and abundance of clerics that they threatened to outnumber the laity. Happy city, where the Holy Books are so assiduously studied and their mysteries so well expounded, where such diligence reigns among the students, and where there is such a knowledge of Scripture that it may be called the city of letters!" At the same period Peter of Blois says that all who wish the settlement of any question should apply to Paris, where the most tangled knots are untied. In his letter to Archbishop William of Sens (1169), St. Thomas à Becket declares himself ready to submit his difference with the King of England to the judgment of the scholars at Paris.

The long episcopate of Maurice de Sully (1160-96), the son of a simple serf, was marked by the consecration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame (see below) and the journey to Paris of Pope Alexander III (1163). Hughes de Monceaux, Abbot of St-Germain, requested the pope to consecrate the monastery church. Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris, having accompanied the pope to the ceremony, was invited by the abbot to withdraw, and Alexander III declared in a sermon, afterwards confirmed by a Bull, thenceforth the Church of St-Germain-des-Prés was dependent only on the Roman pontiff, and subsequently conferred on the abbot a number of episcopal prerogatives. In time the Abbey of St-Germain became the centre of a bourg, the inhabitants of which were granted municipal freedom by Abbot Hughes de Monceaux about 1170. Eudes de Sully (1197-1208), the successor of Maurice, courageously opposed King Philip II, when he wished to repudiate Ingeburge and wed Agnes de Méran. Philip II was a benefactor of Paris, and the university was founded during his reign (1215). (See PARIS, UNIVERSITY OF.) The thirteenth century, and especially the reign of St. Louis, was a period of great industrial and commercial prosperity for Paris, as is shown by the "Livre des Mestiers" of Etienne Boileau and the invectives of Petrarch. Bishop Guillaume d'Auvergne (1227-49) received from St. Louis the Crown of Thorns, which was borne in procession to Paris on 18 August, 1239. Under St. Louis the Parliament was permanently established at Paris and the Bishop of Paris declared a conseiller-né. Under Philip the Fair occurred at Paris the trial of the Templars (q. v.) which ended (1314) with the execution of Jacques de Molai (q. v.).

PARIS UNDER THE VALOIS 

The troubles of the Hundred Years' War throw into relief the character of Pierre de la Forest, Bishop of Paris (1350-2), later Archbishop of Rouen and cardinal. After the Battle of Poitiers (1356), at which John II was taken prisoner, the dauphin Charles (afterwards Charles V) convoked at Paris the States General of 1356, 1357, and 1358. At these assemblies the provost of merchants, Etienne Marcel, and Robert Le Coq, Bishop of Laon, were the leaders of a violent opposition to the royal party. The result of the assassination of Etienne Marcel was the dauphin's victory. Having become king as Charles V, the latter made himself a magnificent residence at the Hôtel St-Paul, rebuilt the Louvre, and began the construction of the Bastille. During his reign the cardinalitial purple was first given to the bishops of Paris. Etienne de Paris (1363-8) and Aimeri de Maignac (1368-84) received it in turn. The revolt of the Maillotins (1381) and the wars between the Burgundians and Armagnacs during the first twenty years of the fifteenth century filled Paris with blood. After the Treaty of Troyes (1420) Paris received an English garrison. Because of his sympathy with Charles VI, John Courtecuisse, a theologian of Gallican tendencies who became bishop in 1420, was compelled to go into exile at Geneva, where he died in 1423. The attack of Joan of Arc on Paris in 1430 was unsuccessful. The Treaty of Arras between Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and Charles VII, restored Paris under the dominion of the kings of France. Louis XI (q. v.), successor of Charles VII, was much beloved by the citizens of Paris. The poet Jean du Bellay, friend of Francis I and several times ambassador, was Bishop of Paris from 1532 to 1551, and was made cardinal in 1535. With him the Renaissance was established in the diocese, and it was at his persuasion that Francis I founded for the teaching of languages and philology the Collège Royal, which later became the Collège de France (1529). In 1533 du Ballay negotiated between Henry VIII and Clement VII in an attempt to prevent England's break with the Holy See, and, when in 1536 the troops of Charles V threatened Picardy and Champagne, he received from Francis I the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom and placed Paris in a state of defence. Du Bellay was a typical prelate of the Renaissance, and was celebrated for his three books of Latin poetry and his magnificent Latin discourses. For a time he had for his secretary, Rabelais, whom he is said to have inspired to write "Pantagruel". He was disgraced under Henry II, resigned his bishopric in 1551, and went to Rome, where he died. The consequences of the rise of Protestantism and of the wars of religion in regard to Paris are treated under SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY; LEAGUE, THE; FRANCE.

PARIS UNDER THE BOURBONS 

With Cardinal Pierre de Gondi (died 1598), who occupied the See of Paris from 1568, began the Gondi dynasty which occupied the see for a century. As ambassador to Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V, Pierre de Gondi always opposed the League and favoured the accession of Henry of Navarre. After the episcopate of his nephew Cardinal Henri de Gondi (1598-1622), Paris became an archiepiscopal see, and was given to Jean François de Gondi. As early as 1376 Charles V had sought the erection of Paris to archiepiscopal rank, but, out of regard for the archbishops of Sens, the Holy See had then refused to grant the petition. Louis XIII was more successful, and by a Bull of October, 1622, Paris was made a metropolitan see with Chartres, Meaux, and Orléans as suffragans. Jean François de Gondi did much to further the development of religious congregations (see BÉRULLE, PIERRE DE; ORATORY, FRENCH CONGREGATION OF THE; OLIER, JEAN-JACQUES; ST-SULPICE, SOCIETY OF; VINCENT DE PAUL, SAINT), and, during the civil disturbances of the Fronde, laboured for the relief of the suffering populace, whose tireless benefactor was St. Vincent de Paul. The archbishop's coadjutor was his nephew Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (q. v.), who often played the part of a political conspirator. In 1662 the See of Paris was for a very brief period occupied by the Gallican canonist Pierre de Marca, earlier Archbishop of Toulouse. He was succeeded by Hardouin de Péréfixe de Beaumont (1662-71), during whose episcopate began the sharp conflicts evoked by Jansenism. He had been tutor to Louis XIV and was the biographer of Henry IV. Harlay de Champvallon (1671-95) is the subject of a separate article. Louis Antoine de Noailles (1695-1729), made cardinal in 1700, played an important part in the disputes concerning Quietism and Jansenism. After an attempt to reconcile Bossuet and Fénelon he took sides against the latter, successively approved and condemned Quesnel's book, and did not subscribe to the Bull "Unigenitus" until 1728. In the eighteenth century the See of Paris was made illustrious by Christophe de Beaumont (1746-81), earlier Bishop of Bayonne and Archbishop of Vienne, who succeeded in putting an end to the opposition lingering among some of the clergy to the Bull "Unigenitus". The parliamentarians protested against the denial of the sacraments to impenitent Jansenists, and Louis XV, after having at first forbidden the Parliament to concern itself with this question, turned against the archbishop, exiled him, and then endeavoured to secure his resignation by offering him tempting dignities. But it was especially against the philosophes that this prelate waged war; pamphlets were written against him, among them the "Lettre de Jean Jacques Rousseau à monseigneur l'archévêque de Paris". Antoine Le Clerc de Juigné (died 1811), who succeeded Beaumont in 1781, was president of the clergy at the States General of 1789. He went into exile during the Revolution, and at the Concordat resigned his see at the pope's request.

PARIS DURING THE REVOLUTION 

Within the present boundaries of the archdiocese the number of priests forming the active clergy at the time of the Revolution was about 1000, of whom 600 were in Parisian parishes, 150 in those of the suburbs, and 250 were chaplains. There were 921 religious, belonging to 21 religious families divided among 38 convents. Immediately after the adoption of the Civil Constitution of the clergy 8 new parishes were created in Paris and 27 were suppressed. Out of 50 Parisian pastors 26 refused to take the oath; out of 69 first or second curates 36 refused; of the 399 other priests haying spiritual powers, 216 refused. On the other hand among the priests who, not exercising parochial duties, were not called upon to swear, 196 declared that they would take the oath and 14 refused. On 13 March 1791, Gobel (born 1727), Bishop of Lydda, Coadjutor Bishop of Basle, and a member of the Constitutional Assembly, was elected bishop by 500 votes. Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Sens, and Jarente, Bishop of Orléans, though both had accepted the civil constitution of the clergy, refused to give Gobel canonical institution, and he received it from the famous Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun. Gobel surrounded himself with married clerics such as Louis de Saint Martin, Colombart, and Aubert, and through the Marquis of Spinola, Minister of the Republic of Genoa, endeavoured to obtain from the Holy See a sum of money in exchange for his submission. At the beginning of 1793 he was at the head of about 600 "sworn" priests, about 500 of whom were employed in parishes. On 7 November, 1793, he solemnly declared before the Convention that his subordinates and he renounced the duties of ministers of Catholic worship, whereupon the Convention congratulated him on having "sacrificed the grotesque baubles of superstition". On the same day Notre-Dame was dedicated to the worship of Reason, Citizeness Aubry, a comédienne, impersonating that goddess and Gobel presiding at the ceremony. Finally, the Commune of Paris decided that all churches should be closed, and that whosoever requested that they be reopened should be regarded as a suspect. In March, 1794, Gobel was condemned to death as an atheist by the followers of Robespierre, and was executed after lengthy spiritual interviews with the Sulpician Emery and after he had addressed to Abbé Lothringer a letter in which he declared his repentance. In the absence of Juigné, the legitimate bishop, the Catholic faithful continued to obey a council formed of the Abbés de Malaret, Emery, and Espinasse, under the leadership of the former vicar-general, Charles Henri du Valk de Dampierre, who was in hiding. Public worship was restored by the Law of Ventose, Year III, and by the law of 2 Prairial, Year III (30 March, 1795), fifteen churches were reopened. As early as 1796 about fifty places of worship had been reopened in Paris; sixteen or seventeen, of which eleven were parochial churches, were administered by priests who had accepted the Constitution. More than thirty others of which three were parochial churches, were administered by priests who were in secret obedience to the legitimate archbishop, and the number of Constitutional priests had fallen from 600 to 150.

PARIS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

The Archdiocese of Paris became more and more important in France during the nineteenth century. Jean Baptiste de Belloy, former Bishop of Marseilles, who was appointed archbishop in 1802, was then ninety-three years old. On 18 April, 1802, he presided at Notre-Dame over the ceremony at which the Concordat was solemnly published. Despite his great age he reorganized worship in Paris, and re-established religious life in its forty-two parishes. In a conciliatory spirit he appointed to about twelve of these parishes priests who had taken the oath during the Revolution. He became cardinal in 1803 and died in 1808. The conflict between Napoleon and Pius VII was then at its height. Napoleon attempted to make Fesch accept the See of Paris, while the latter wished to retain that of Lyons. Cardinal Maury (1746-1817), formerly a royalist deputy to the Constitutional Assembly, also ambassador to the Holy See from the Count of Provence, but who went over to the Empire in 1800 and in 1810 became chaplain to King Jerome, was named Archbishop of Paris by Napoleon on 14 Oct., 1810. The chapter at once conferred on him the powers of vicar-capitular, until he should be preconized by the pope, but, when it became known that Pius VII, by a Brief of 5 November, 1810, refused to recognize the nomination, Maury was actively opposed by a section of the chapter and the clergy. The emperor took his revenge by striking at the vicar-capitular, Astros (q. v.). At the fall of Napoleon, despite his zeal in persuading it to adhere to the deposition of the emperor, Maury was deprived of his faculties by the chapter. In agreement with Rome, Louis XVIII named as Archbishop of Paris (1 Aug., 1817) Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord (1736-1821), who, despite the Concordat, chose to retain his title of Archbishop of Reims until 1816 and who was created cardinal on 28 July, 1817. Talleyrand-Périgord did not take possession of his see until Oct., 1819. He divided the diocese into three arch-deaneries, which division is still in force.

On the death of Talleyrand-Périgord in 1821, his coadjutor Hyacinthe Louis de Quélen (1778-1840), court chaplain, succeeded him. A member of the Chamber of Peers under the Restoration, Quélen, as president of the commission for the investigation of the school situation, vainly endeavoured to prevent the promulgation of the Martignac ordinances against the Jesuits in June, 1828. His friendly relations with Louis XVIII and Charles X drew upon him in 1830 the hostility of the populace; his palace was twice sacked, and the Monarchy of July regarded him with suspicion, but the devotion he showed during a terrible cholera epidemic won many hearts to him. Assisted by Dupanloup he converted the famous Talleyrand, nephew of his predecessor, on his death-bed in 1838. Quélen died 8 Jan., 1840, and was succeeded by Denis-Auguste Affre, (q. v., 1793-1848), who was slain at the barricades in 1848. Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour (1792-1862), formerly Bishop of Digne, succeeded Affre; among the prelates consulted by Pius IX with regard to the opportuneness of defining the Immaculate Conception, he was one of the few who opposed it. He was killed in the church of St-Etienne-du-Mont on 3 Jan., 1857, by a suspended priest. After the short episcopate of Cardinal Morlot (1857-62) the see was occupied from 1862 to 1872 by Georges Darboy (q. v.), who was slain during the Commune. Joseph-Hippolyte Guibert (1802-86), previously Bishop of Viviers and Archbishop of Tours, became Archbishop of Paris on 27 Oct., 1871. His episcopate was made notable by the erection of the basilica of Montmartre (see below), and the creation of the Catholic University, at the head of which he placed Mgr d'Hulst. His successor was François-Marie-Benjamin Richard (1819-1907), former Bishop of Belley, who had been coadjutor of Paris since July, 1875, became cardinal 24 May, 1889, and was active in the defence of the religious congregations. Mgr Léon Amette (born at Douville, in the Diocese of Evreux, 1850), coadjutor to Cardinal Richard since February, 1906, succeeded him in the See of Paris, on 28 Jan., 1908.

NOTRE-DAME-DE-PARIS 

On the site now occupied by the courtyards of Notre-Dame de Paris there was as early as the sixth century a church of Notre-Dame, which had as patrons the Blessed Virgin, St. Stephen, and St. Germain. It was built by Childebert about 528, and on the site of the present sacristy there was also a church dedicated to St. Stephen. The Norman invasions destroyed Notre-Dame, but St-Etienne remained standing, and for a time served as the cathedral. At the end of the ninth century Notre-Dame was rebuilt, and the two churches continued to exist side by side until the eleventh century when St-Etienne fell to ruin. Maurice de Sully resolved to erect a magnificent cathedral on the ruins of St-Etienne and the site of Notre-Dame. Surrounded by twelve cardinals, Alexander III, who sojourned at Paris from 24 March to 25 April, 1163, laid the corner-stone. Henri de Château-Marçay, papal legate, consecrated the high altar in 1182; Hierarchus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, officiated in 1185 in the completed choir; the façade was finished in 1218, the towers in 1235. Jean and Pierre de Chelles completed the work, and, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the cathedral was as it is now. The following are among the noteworthy events which took place at Notre-Dame: the depositing by St. Louis (10 Aug., 1239) of the Crown of Thorns, a portion of the True Cross, and a nail of the Passion; the obsequies of St. Louis (21 May, 1271); the assembling of the first States-General (10 April, 1302); the coronation of Henry VI of England as King of France (17 Nov., 1431); the coronation of Mary Stuart (4 April, 1560); the funeral oration of the Duc de Mercœur by St. Francis de Sales (27 April, 1602); the vow of Louis XIII, making the Assumption a feast of the kingdom (10 Feb., 1638); the abjuration of the Maréchal de Turenne (23 Oct., 1668); the funeral oration of the Prince de Condé by Bossuet (10 March, 1687).

During the French Revolution, in the period following 1790, the treasury was despoiled of many of its precious objects, which were sent to the mint to be melted down. The Crown of Thorns was taken to the cabinet of antiquities of the Bibliothèque Nationale and thus escaped destruction. The statues of the kings, which adorned the porch, were destroyed in October, 1793, by order of the Paris Commune. The feast of Reason was celebrated in Notre-Dame in November, 1793; in December of the same year Saint-Simon, the future founder of the Saint-Simonian religion, was about to purchase the church and destroy it. From 1798 it contained the offices of the Constitutional clergy, and from 5 March to 28 May, 1798, it was also the meeting-place of the Theophilanthropists. Catholic worship was resumed on 18 April, 1802, and the coronation of Napoleon took place there on 2 December, 1804. By the preface of his novel "Notre Dame de Paris" (1832) Victor Hugo aroused a strong public sentiment in favour of the cathedral. In April, 1844, the Government entrusted Lassus and Viollet le Duc with a complete restoration, which was completed in 1864. On 31 May, 1864, Archbishop Darboy dedicated the restored cathedral. The marriage of Napoleon III (30 January, 1853), the funeral services of President Carnot (1 July, 1894), the obsequies of President Félix Faure (23 Feb., 1899), took place at Notre-Dame. Notre-Dame has been a minor basilica since 27 Feb., 1805. As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century at least two churches were copied entirely from the cathedral of Paris, viz, the collegiate church of Mantes (Seine-et-Oise.) and the cathedral of Nicosia in the Island of Cyprus, the bishop of which was a brother of the cantor of Notre-Dame. The Ile de la Cité, where Notre-Dame stands, also contains the Sainte-Chapelle, in the Palais de la Justice, one of the most beautiful religious buildings in Paris. It was built (1212-47) under St. Louis by Pierre de Montereau, with the exception of the spire. Its stained-glass windows are admirable. In former times the king, from an ogival baldachin, displayed to the people the relics of the Passion.

PRINCIPAL CHURCHES ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE SEINE 

The Church of St-Germain-l'Auxerrois was built between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century on the site of a baptistery built by St. Germain, where baptism was administered on fixed dates. At other times the piscina was dry, and the catechumens came and seated themselves on the steps while catechetical classes were held. Three tragic recollections are connected with this church. On 24 August, 1572, its bells gave the signal for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; in 1617, the body of Concini, Maréchal d'Ancre, which had been buried there, was disinterred by the mob and mutilated; on 14 Feb., 1831, the people sacked the church under the pretext that an anniversary Mass was being celebrated for the soul of the Duc de Berry. The Church of St-Eustache, built between 1532 and 1637, was the scene of the First Communion of Louis XIV (1649), the funeral oration of Turenne preached by Fléchier (1676), and Massillon's sermon on the small number of the elect (1704). Massillon preached the Lenten sermons in the church of St-Leu (fourteenth century), and the conspirator Georges Cadoudal hid in its crypt from the police of Bonaparte. In the Church of St-Gervais (early sixteenth-century), where the League was established, Bossuet preached the funeral sermon of Chancellor Michel Le Tellier. Its doorway, of which Louis XIII laid the first stone in 1616, is a very beautiful work of Salomon de Brosse. Blessed Marie de l'Incarnation was baptized at Saint-Merry (1520-1612). In Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile (rebuilt 1664-1726) St. Vincent de Paul presided over the meetings at which the charity bureaux were organized. Charles VI, Charles VII, and Olier were baptized in the Church of St-Paul, destroyed during the Revolution. The Church of St-Louis (seventeenth-century), former chapel of the Jesuit professed house, where Bourdaloue preached the funeral sermon of Condé and where he was buried, was chosen at the Concordat to replace the parish of St-Paul, and took the name of St-Paul-St-Louis. The Madeleine (begun 1764 and finished 1824), of which Napoleon I wished to make a Temple of Glory, had within less than a century two pastors, who were martyred, Le Ber, butchered in 1792, and Deguerry, shot in 1871. The Church of St-Lawrence (fifteenth-century) was often visited by St. Vincent de Paul, who lived in the convent of St-Lazare within the confines of the parish. Here was buried Venerable Madame Le Gras, foundress of the Sisters of Charity. During the Revolution it was given to the Theophilanthropists who made of it the "Temple of Hymen and Fidelity". With regard to Notre-Dame-des-Victoires see below under FAMOUS PILGRIMAGES. St-Denys-de-la-Chapelle (thirteenth-century) stands where St. Genevieve and her companions rested, when they were making a pilgrimage from Paris to the tomb of St. Denis. Bl. Joan of Arc, who had come to besiege Paris, stopped here to pray.

PRINCIPAL CHURCHES ON THE LEFT BANK 

St-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet (1656-1758) is famous for the seminary which Bourdoise founded in the vicinity, for the Forty Hours preached there by St. Francis de Sales, and for the funeral oration of Lamoignon preached there by Fléchier. St-Sulpice (1646-1745) is famous for its pastor Olier (q. v.); in 1793 it was a temple of Victory, under the Directory it was used by the Theophilanthropists, and there Pius VII consecrated the bishops of La Rochelle and Poitiers. To the architectural importance of St-Germain-des-Prés was added in the nineteenth century the attraction of Flandrin's frescoes. St-Médard (fifteenth-sixteenth-century) became celebrated in the eighteenth century owing to the sensation caused by the Jansenists with regard to the wonders wrought at the tomb of the deacon Paris. St-Séverin (fourteenth-fifteenth-century), one of the most remarkable Gothic edifices of Paris, replaced an older church in which Foulques de Neuily preached the Fourth Crusade in 1199; St. Vincent de Paul, Bossuet, Massillon, Fléchier, Lacordaire, and Ravignan preached in this church. Originally dedicated to St. Severinus, a Parisian hermit, who was buried there in 555, it was dedicated to St. Severinus of Agaune from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and since 1753 has had both these saints as patrons. Ste-Clotilde (1846-61) was made a minor basilica on 19 April, 1897, at the time of the fourteenth centenary of Clovis. St-Lambert-de-Vaugirard had as pastor Olier, who founded the Society of St-Sulpice, and St. John Baptist de la Salle opened his first school in this parish; its name of Vaugirard (Vallis Gerardi) recalls the charitable Abbot of St-Germain-des-Prés, Gerard de Moret, who built dwellings for sick religious in the locality. The church of the Sorbonne, where religious services are no longer held, was begun in 1635, Richelieu laying its foundation stone, and completed in 1646. Richelieu's tomb in this church was violated during the Revolution; the cardinal's head, which was taken away on this occasion, was restored to this church in 1866. The chapel of Val-de-Gârce, a very beautiful specimen of the Jesuit style and famous for its cupola wherein Mignard has depicted the glory of the blessed, was built in fulfillment of a vow made by Anne of Austria. Mansart was its first architect, and the corner-stone was laid in 1645 by Louis XIV at the age of seven. Here was buried Henrietta of France, wife of Charles I of England, and here Bossuet preached the Lenten sermons of 1663. It is now the chapel of the Paris military hospital. The chapel of St-Louis-des-Invalides contains the tomb of Napoleon I. In the crypt of the Church of St-Joseph-des-Carmes, built by the Carmelites between 1613 and 1625 and now the church of the Institut Catholique, are the tomb of Ozanam and the remains of the 120 priests massacred in this church on 2 Sept., 1792, after fifteen days of captivity. In this crypt Lacordaire remained attached to a cross for three hours.

PRINCIPAL ABBEYS 

The Benedictine Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés, the foundation and medieval splendour of which have been described above, was long famous for the fair which it held. During the seventeenth century its important library made it a centre of learning, and Luc d'Achéry, Mabillon, and Montfaucon rendered it illustrious. Abbé Prévost, author of the famous romance "Manon Lescaut", was for a time a Benedictine at St-Germain-des-Prés, where he worked on "Gallia Christiana". John Casimir, first a Jesuit and later King of Poland, died as Abbot of St-Germain-des-Prés in 1672. The abbey prison was the scene of the September massacres in 1792.

The origin of the Abbey of St-Victor was a hermitage, to which William of Champeaux (q. v.) retired in 1108. The abbey was founded by a royal charter in 1113, and had as first abbot Gilduin, confessor of Louis the Fat. The abbey governed the priories of Corbeil, Château-Laudon, Etampes, Mantes, Poissy, Dreux, and even the cathedral of Séez. During the first century it was rendered illustrious by Richard of St-Victor, Hugh of St-Victor, and the liturgical poet, Adam of St-Victor. Grave abuses having crept into the Congregation of the Canons of St. Genevieve, Pope Eugenius III and Suger in 1148 introduced the Canons Regular of St. Augustine from the Abbey of St-Victor. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century the abbey passed through a period of decadence, and in 1498 two strange monks, John Standonck, rector of the College of Montaigu, and John Monbaer of Windesheim near Zwolle, spent nine months at the abbey to effect its reform. With the sixteenth century began a series of commendatory abbots, one of whom, Antonio Caracciolo, became a Protestant. The canons of St-Victor took a very important part in the League. The first half of the seventeenth century was characterized by a conflict between Jean de Toulouse, prior of St-Victor, and the Genovéfains; a decision of the official (28 June, 1645) declared St-Victor autonomous. Jansenism found its way into St-Victor, and was combatted by Simon Gourdan, who was persecuted. In the eighteenth century its library was celebrated, and was open to the public three times a week. The librarian Mulot, who was also grand prior, published a translation of "Daphnis and Chloe". The abbey's end was sad. When the Revolutionary commissaries questioned the twenty-one religious present, only one, aged 81, affirmed his desire to remain; nine did not reply, eleven left the monastery, and the librarian Mulot became a deputy of the Legislative Assembly. The abbey was destroyed in November, 1798.

The early history of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, is very obscure. In the second half of the fifth century the clergy of Paris erected at the instance of St. Genevieve in the village of Catulliacus where the saint was buried, a basilica, administered by a community of monks. Pilgrims flocked thither, and, as early as 625, a charter of Clotaire II authorized the abbot to receive a legacy. Nevertheless, tradition regards Dagobert I (628-38) as the real founder. According to Mabillon, Félibien, and M. Léon Levillain, he merely decorated and embellished the already existing basilica; according to Julian Havet, this early basilica stood at the place called Saint-Denis-de-l'Entrée, west of the present church, and between 623 and 625 Dagobert founded the new abbey church, to which the relics were removed in 626. Whatever the solution of this problem, with which scholars have occupied themselves since the seventeenth century, Dagobert was the abbey's signal benefactor: the altar ornaments, the tomb containing the body of St. Denis, the golden cross set with precious stones which stood behind the high altar were the work of the goldsmith, St. Eligius (Eloi), the king's friend. Dagobert himself desired to be buried at Saint-Denis. At the instance of Abbot Fulrad (died 784) Pepin the Short had the abbey rebuilt, and here on 28 July, 754, Pope Stephen II solemnly administered the royal anointment to Pepin, Queen Bertha, and their two sons, and consecrated an altar. The new edifice was dedicated on 24 Feb., 775, in the presence of Charlemagne. Hilduin, who became abbot in 814, wrote the life of St. Denis, and identifies him with St. Denis the Areopagite; During the ninth century the Normans several times levied tribute on and pillaged the monastery. During the siege of Paris in 886, the monks sought refuge with Archbishop Foulques of Reims, taking with them the body of St. Denis. After these disasters the abbey was restored and perhaps, as some scholars maintain, entirely rebuilt. St. Gerard, of a noble family of the Low Countries, was a monk at St-Denis previously to founding the Abbey of Broglie in 1030. In 1106 Paschal II visited the abbey, and for a time Abelard was a monk there. Suger, minister of Louis VI and Louis VII, who became Abbot of St-Denis in 1122, wished to erect a sumptuous new church; his architectural work is known to us through two of his writings, the "Book of his Administration" and the "Treatise on the Consecration of the Church of St. Denis". St-Denis then attracted numerous pilgrims, whom Suger describes as crowding to the doors, "squeezed as in a press". By a charter of 15 March, 1125, Suger released from mortmain the people of St-Denis, who in gratitude gave him the money for the reconstruction of the church. The work began doubtless about 1132; the choir was consecrated on 11 June, 1144, in the presence of Louis VII, five archbishops, and fourteen bishops, and the translation of the relics took place the same day. The alliance of the Capetians with the monastery of St. Denis was thenceforth sealed. Odo of Deuil, Suger's successor as abbot, was chaplain to Louis VII during the Second Crusade, of which he wrote a chronicle. The Abbey of St-Denis was the repository of the royal insignia - the crown, sceptre, main de justice, and the garments and ornaments used at the coronation of the kings. For each coronation the abbot brought them to Reims. The oriflamme (q. v.) was also kept there, and thither repaired Bl. Joan of Arc after the coronation of Charles VII at Reims.

The new Church of St-Denis has an extreme importance for the history of medieval architecture. It was the earliest important building in which the pointed arch (croisée d'ogive) was used in the chapels of the deambulatory, thus inaugurating this wonderful invention of the Gothic style. The church exercised also a great influence on the development of the industrial arts: the products of the goldsmith's and enameller's art ordered by Suger formed one of the most beautiful treasures of Christianity, some remnants of which are still preserved in the Gallery of Apollo at the Louvre. As regards monumental sculpture M. André Michel, the art historian, writes that "the grand chantry of St-Denis was the decisive studio in the elaboration and, if we may so speak, the proclamation of the new style." In 1231 the religious of St-Denis resolved to reconstruct the basilica, and the chronicler Guillaume de Nangis, a monk at the abbey, says that St. Louis, a friend of their abbot Mathieu de Vendôme, advised them to do so. It may be that portions of the edifice built by Suger had fallen to ruin, or perhaps St. Louis's plan to erect tombs to his predecessors was the origin of the plan. Of Suger's building the western façade, the deambulatory, the chapels of the apse, and the crypt were retained, the remainder being rebuilt. The work was directed by the architect Pierre de Montereau, thanks to whose genius the nave and transept form a glorious example of the splendid Gothic art of the thirteenth century. St-Denis was the historical laboratory of the old French monarchy: the abbot selected a religious who followed the court as historiographer to the king, and, on the death of each king, the history of his reign, after having been submitted to the chapter, was incorporated in the "Grandes Chroniques". Especially important, as historical sources, are the works of the monk Rigord on Philip Augustus and that of Guillaume de Nangis on St. Louis. On the invention of printing the "Grandes Chroniques" were put in order by Jean Chartier, who completed them with the history of Charles VII and published them in 1476, this being the earliest book known to have been printed in Paris.

From 1529 St-Denis had commendatory abbots, the first of whom was Louis Cardinal de Bourbon. The Religious Wars were a disastrous period for the abbey. In 1562 and 1567 tombs were destroyed, the archives ravaged, and the reliquaries of the saints stripped of their plates of gold and silver. Catherine de' Medici planned to erect beside the church a chapel for Henry II and herself; François Primatice, Jean Bullant, and Androuet de Cerceau in turn supervised the work on this great mausoleum, which, owing to the civil disturbances, was never finished and was demolished in 1719. The troubles of the League brought about fresh pillages. Here on 25 July, 1593, Renaud de Beaune, Archbishop of Bourges, received the abjuration of Henry IV. In 1633 the Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur reformed the abbey, and for a time the celebrated Mabillon (1632-1707) was guardian of the treasury. In 1686 Louis XIV transferred the abbatial revenues to the recently founded royal house of St-Cyr. In 1691 the title and dignity of its abbot were suppressed, and thenceforth the abbey was directed by grand priors, dependent on the superior-general of the congregation who resided at the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés. These grand priors were of right vicars-general of the archbishops of Paris. In 1706 the monk Félibien (1666-1719) published the history of the abbey. In the eighteenth century the abbey buildings were entirely rebuilt by the monks, and they were about to change completely the Gothic appearance of the church itself when the Revolution broke out. St-Denis was then called Franciade, the church became first a temple of Reason, and then a market-house. In August, 1793, the Convention, on the recommendation of Barère, ordered the destruction of the tombs of the kings. Immediately most of the Gothic tombs were destroyed, and between 14 and 25 Oct., 1793, the ashes of the Bourbons were scattered to the winds. In 1795 Alexander Lenoir had all the tombs that had been spared removed to the Museum of French Monuments. Napoleon (20 Feb., 1805) decided that the church should be restored, re-established worship there, and decreed that thenceforth St-Denis should be the burial-place of the emperors. At the Restoration the tombs which had been removed to the Museum of French Monuments were restored to St-Denis, but in such a disorderly fashion that Montalembert, in a discourse of 1847, called the Church of St. Denis "a museum of bric-A-brac". A truly artistic restoration was accomplished finally (1847-79) by Viollet le Duc.

Of the thirty-two Capetian kings from Hugh Capet to Louis XV only three were buried elsewhere than in St-Denis. The series of authentic portraits of the kings of France at St-Denis opens with the sepulchral statue of Philip III the Bold (died 1285). Until the sixteenth century the royal tombs at St-Denis maintained modest proportions, but in that century the church was filled with works of art. The monument of the Dukes of Orléans, erected by Louis XII, was the work of four Genoese sculptors; that of Louis XII (died 1515) and Anne of Brittany (died 1514), is the work of the Juste family, Italian sculptors residing at Tours; the magnificent monument of Francis I and Claude of France is the work of the great architect Philibert Delorme and of the sculptor Pierre Bontemps; that of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici, executed under the direction of Primatice, is admired for the sculptures of Germain Pilon. The only monument representing the art of the seventeenth century is that of Turenne. The episcopal chapter of St-Denis, created by Napoleon I to care for the basilica, was composed of ten canons whose head was the grand almoner. The canons had to be former bishops more than fifty years of age. The Restoration created canons of a second order, who were not chosen from among the bishops, and the grand almoner received the title of primicier (dean) of the chapter. The empire and the Restoration claimed that this chapter, which Napoleon had created without taking counsel with Rome, should not be subject to the jurisdiction of the ordinary. This was the cause of conflict until 1846, when the pope issued a Bull placing the chapter of St-Germain under the direct supervision of the Holy See; the primate retained episcopal authority over the church and the house of the Legion of Honour annexed to the church, and the Archbishop of Paris had no spiritual jurisdiction over either of these buildings. The budget for the chapter of St-Denis was suppressed by the State in 1888. The theologian Maret, famous for his writings against the opportuneness of the definition of infallibility, was the last primate.

FAMOUS PILGRIMAGES 

(1) Tomb of St. Genevieve

St. Genevieve is the patroness of Paris, but after the conversion of the church into a Pantheon of France's great men the saint had no church in Paris. Since 1803 her tomb has been at St-Etienne-du-Mont (built 1517-1620), the burial-place of Racine and Pascal. There Pius VII went to pray on 10 January, 1805, and it was the scene of the assassination of Archbishop Sibour on 3 January, 1857. The veneration of St. Genevieve is expressed in two feasts:

• (1) on her feast proper (3 January) and the following eight days a solemn novena takes place at St-Etienne-du-Mont and at the church of Nanterre, birthplace of St. Genevieve, whither Clotaire II, St. Louis, Blanche of Castile, Louis XIII, and Anne of Austria went to venerate her memory:

• (2) on 26 November, anniversary of the miracle whereby, in 1130, a procession of the relics of St. Genevieve cured many Parisians of the mal des ardents (Miracle des arderts).

(2) Notre-Dame-des-Victoires

In consequence of the visions granted to Catherine Labouré (who six months previously had become a member of the Sisters of Charity), M. Aladel, assistant of the Lazarists, with the approval of Mgr de Quélen, had struck the "miraculous medal" of Mary Conceived without Sin, more than 4,000,000 of which were distributed throughout the world within four years. In 1838 Desgenettes, pastor of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, organized in that church the Association in honour of the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Gregory XVI made a confraternity on 24 April, 1838, and the badge of which was the miraculous medal. In virtue of another indult of Gregory XVI (7 Dec., 1838) the Diocese of Paris received the right to transfer to the second Sunday of Advent the solemnity of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. On 10 July, 1894, Leo XIII granted to the Lazarists, and to the dioceses that should request it, the faculty of celebrating yearly on 27 November the manifestation of the Blessed Virgin through the miraculous medal. This feast was first celebrated at Paris in the chapel of Rue du Bac on 25, 26, and 27 November, 1894. On 27 July, 1897, the statue of the Blessed Virgin in this chapel was solemnly crowned in virtue of a Brief of Leo XIII (2 March, 1897). In 1899 the number of Masses celebrated by foreign priests at Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was 3031; the number of Communions, 110,000; intentions 1,305,980, or an average of 3578 per day.

(3) Montmartre

Prior to the ninth century there were two churches on the hill of Montmartre - one, half way up, stood on the traditional site of the martrydom of St. Denis, while the other, on the summit, was said to replace a temple dedicated to Mars. In 1095 these two churches became the property of a monastery occupied first (1095-1134) by the monks of St-Martin-des-Champs, and from 1034 to the Revolution by the Benedictines. The church on the summit was rebuilt in the twelfth century, and consecrated on 21 April, 1147, by Pope Eugenius III with St. Bernard of Clairvaux as deacon, and Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, as subdeacon. Alexander III visited it in 1162; St. Thomas à Becket in 1170; St. Thomas Aquinas, Bl. Joan of Arc, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, St. Vincent de Paul, Olier, and Blessed John Eudes prayed there. During the war of 1870-71 MM. Legentil and Rohault de Fleury issued from Poitiers an appeal in behalf of the erection at Paris of a sanctuary to the Sacred Heart to obtain the release of the pope and the salvation of France. On 23 July, 1873, the National Assembly passed a law declaring the construction of this sanctuary a matter of public utility. After a meeting in which seventy architects took part Abadie was charged with its construction, in Byzantine style. Cardinal Guibert laid the corner-stone on 16 June, 1875, and said the first Mass in the crypt on 21 April, 1881. Cardinal Richard blessed the church on 5 June, 1891, and on 17 October 1899, blessed the cross surmounting the main dome.

(4) Pilgrimage to the Church of St. Francis

Pilgrimage to the Church of St. Francis in honour of the famous Miracle des Billettes in 1290, when blood flowed from a Host which had been profaned by a Jew and Christ appeared above the receptacle where the Jew had thrown the Host.

(5) Pilgrimage to the chapel of the Picpus

A Pilgrimage in honour of the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Paix which the famous Capuchin Joyeuse, known as Père Ange, gave to his convent (sixteenth century).

(6) Pilgrimage of Notre-Dame-des-Vertus

A Pilgrimage at the church of Aubervilliers (dating from 1336), whither Louis XIII, St. Ignatius, Blessed John Eudes, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, St. John Baptist de la Salle, and Bossuet went to pray.

(7) Pilgrimage of Notre-Dame-des-Miracles

A Pilgrimage at Saint-Maur, dating from the erection of a chapel of the Blessed Virgin by the Abbot St. Babolein about 640. The future Pope Martin IV, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, Emperor Charles IV of Germany, and Olier prayed there.

(8) Pilgrimage in honour of St. Vincent de Paul

A Pilgrimage to the parish church of Clichy, built by the saint.

SAINTS OF PARIS 

A number of saints are especially connected with the history of the Diocese of Paris: Sts. Agoard and Aglibert, martyred at Cretil; St. Lucan, martyred at Paris; St. Eugene, who according to the legend was sent by Saint Denis to Spain, founded the Church of Toledo, and was martyred at Deuil; St. Yon, a disciple of St. Denis; St. Lucian, companion of St. Denis, martyred at Beauvais (third century); St. Rieul, founder (c. 300) of the Church of Senlis, visited and encouraged the Christian community of Paris; St. Martin (316-400), Bishop of Tours, while at Paris, cured a leper by embracing him; Sts. Alda (Aude) and Célinie, companions of St. Genevieve; the nun St. Aurea, disciple of St. Genevieve (fifth century); St. Germain (380-448), Bishop of Auxerre, whose name is linked with the history of St. Genevieve; St. Séverin, Abbot of Agaune (died 508), who was summoned to Paris to cure Clovis of a serious illness; Queen St. Clotilde (died 545); St. Leonard, a noble of Clovis's court, who became a hermit in Limousin and died about 559; St. Columbanus (540-615), who performed a miracle during his stay in Paris; St. Cloud (died 560), grandson of St. Clotilde, who was made a monk by St. Séverin; St. Radegund (519-87), wife of Clotaire I; St. Eloi (Eligius, 588-659), founder of the convent of St. Martial, minister of Clotaire II and of Dagobert; St. Bathilde, Queen of France (died 680); St. Domnolus (sixth century), Abbot of St-Laurent, Paris, prior to becoming Bishop of Le Mans; St. Bertechramnus (Bertrand, 553-623), Archdeacon of Paris, later Bishop of Le Mans; St. Aure, virgin (7th century), first Abbess of St. Martial; St. Merry, Benedictine Abbot (died 700); St. Ouen (609-86), who was a friend of St. Eligius and died Archbishop of Rouen; St. Sulpice (seventh century), chaplain of Clotaire II, died as Archbishop of Bourges; St. Doctrovée (seventh century), first Abbot of St. Vincent; St Leu, Bishop of Sens (seventh century), who on his way through Paris released a number of prisoners; St. John of Matha (1160-1213), who was a student of the University of Paris, and, while saying his first Mass in the chapel of the Bishop of Paris, had the vision which induced him to found the Trinitarians; St. William, canon of Paris, who died in 1209 as Archbishop of Bourges; Bl. Reginald (1160-1220), professor of canon law at the University of Paris; St. Bonaventure (1221-74), student and afterwards professor at the University of Paris; St. Thomas Aquinas (1227-74), successively student, professor, and preacher at the University of Paris; Bl. Gregory X (pope 1271-6), doctor of the University of Paris; St. Yves (1253-1303), who studied law at the University of Paris; Bl. Innocent V (pope 1276), who succeeded St. Thomas Aquinas as professor of theology at the University of Paris; St. Louis (1215-70), and his sister Bl. Isabelle (1224-70), foundress of the Abbey of Poor Clares of Longchamps, who later called themselves Urbanists because their rule was confirmed by Urban V; Bl. Peter of Luxemburg (1369-87), canon of Paris before becoming Bishop of Metz; Blessed Urban V (pope 1362-70), sometime professor of canon law at the University of Paris; Bl. Jeanne-Marie de Maille (1332-1414), who came to Paris to make known to the king her prophetical visions concerning France; Bl. Jeanne de Valois (1464-1505), daughter of Louis XI and wife of Louis XII, foundress of the Annunciades; St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556); St. Francis Xavier (1506-52), who studied at the Collège de St-Barbe and made his vows as a Jesuit at Montmartre; Mme Acarie, venerated as Bl. Marie de l'Incarnation (1565-1618), a Parisian by birth, who, under the protection of the Duchesse de Longueville, established at Paris the Carmelites of the Faubourg St-Jacques; St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), who was educated at the Collège de Clermont, Paris, and later preached there on two occasions; St. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660), who, having received from Jean-François de Gondi the Collège des Bons Enfants, founded there the Congregation of the Mission; Bl. Louis Grignion de Montfort (seventeenth century), who studied at St-Sulpice and preached several times at Paris.

SPECIAL FEATURES OF ECCLESIASTICAL PARIS 

The feast of the Immaculate Conception was celebrated at Paris as early as the thirteenth century by the students of the English and Norman nations in the Church of St-Séverin, and a confraternity was established there in honour of the Immaculate Conception in the fourteenth century. Even in the last quarter of the twelfth century the poet Adam, canon regular of St-Victor, seems to have accepted this dogma. The University of Paris opposed it until the arrival of Duns Scotus, who came to debate the question with the Dominican doctors at Paris. The belief spread during the fourteenth century, and the Dominican Jean de Montson, having maintained in 1387 that the theory was contrary to faith, was excommunicated. The doctors of the university were among those most eager to hasten at the Council of Basle the investigations preparatory to the definition of the Immaculate Conception, which this council, in the meantime become schismatical, promulgated in 1439. At last, on 9 March, 1497, the university issued a decree obliging all its members to promise on oath to profess and defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and declaring the contrary opinion false, impious, and erroneous. In 1575 it took issue with the famous Jesuit Maldonatus, who still regarded it as an optional opinion, but it refrained from formally branding as heretics those who did not admit the doctrine, as laid down by Benedict XIV in his treatise, "De festis". The procession in honour of the Assumption was inaugurated at Paris in 1638, when Louis XIII placed his kingdom under the protection of the Blessed Virgin. Devotion to the departed souls is perhaps the most deeply rooted form of Parisian piety. Even in the eighteenth century the clocheteurs of the dead traversed the streets at night, ringing their bells and calling:

Réveillez vous, gens qui dormez,

Priez Dieu pour les trépassés.

The Association of Our Lady of Suffrage for the Dead, founded in 1838 at the Church of St. Merry by Archbishop Quélen and raised to an archconfraternity in 1857 by Pius IX, is still flourishing. Several expiatory chapels exist in Paris:

• (1) in memory of Louis XVI and the members of his family who fell victims to the Terror;

• (2) in memory of the 1300 persons beheaded at the barrier of the Place du Trône (including the 16 Carmelites of Compiègne) and buried in the cemetery of Picpus;

• (3) in memory of the Duc d'Orléans, who was killed in 1842 in a carriage accident;

• (4) in memory of the victims of the dreadful fire at the Charity Bazar (4 May, 1897).

RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS 

Prior to the application of the Law of Associations of 1901, there was a large number of religious congregations in Paris. Among those having their mother-house in the city were: the Assumptionists, who preserved in their chapel a statue of Notre-Dame-de-Salut which, according to tradition, smiled on Duns Scotus in 1304 when he was about to preach on the Immaculate Conception; the Eudists (q. v.); the Missionary Priests of Mercy (founded in 1808 by Père Rauzau), who were the founders of the French parish in New York; the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (founded in 1816 by Eugene de Mazenod), the apostles of Upper and Lower Canada, New Brittany, Oregon, British Columbia, Texas, and Mexico; the Oratorians, founded in 1611 by Pierre de Bérulle (q. v); the Priests of Picpus (founded in 1805 by Abbé Coudrin), the founders of missions in Oceania - four of its members were martyred under the Commune (1871), Pères Radique, Tuffier, Rouchouze, and Tardieu; the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament, founded by Père Eymard; the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded by St. John Baptist de la Salle; the Marianist Brothers founded at Bordeaux in 1817 for the education of the young; the Nuns of the Assumption, founded in 1839 under the patronage of Archbishop Affre for the education of young girls; the Sisters of Charitable Instruction of the Child Jesus (of St. Maur) for nursing and teaching, which was founded in 1666 by Père Barré, O. Minim., and has missions in Japan, Siam, and Malacca; the Sisters of Mary Help, founded in 1854 for the care of young working-women; the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge (of St. Michael), founded in 1641 by Venerable Eudes to receive voluntary penitents; the Religious of the Mother of God, a teaching order founded by Olier in 1648; the Religious of the Cenacle founded at Paris in 1826; the Religious of the Sacred Heart, founded in the beginning of the nineteenth century by Madame Barat (q. v.); the Sisters of Picpus, a teaching and contemplative order founded at Poitiers and removed to Paris in 1804; the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, a teaching order founded by Père Ratisbonne.

Prior to 1901 there were also at Paris: Carmelites Dominicans, several of whom were martyred during the Commune (martyrs of Arcueil); Franciscans; Jesuits, five of whom were martyred during the Commune (viz. Pères Olivaint, Clerc, de Bengy, Ducoudray, and Caubert); Marists; Priests of Mercy; Missionaries of the Sacred Heart; and Redemptorists. Important educational works brought to an end by the law of 1901 were the boarding-schools of the Abbaye aux Bois, Oiseaux, and Roule, conducted by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, a congregation founded at the end of the sixteenth century by St. Peter Fourier. The same law also terminated the existence of two great Carmelite convents - the one, founded in 1604 in the Faubourg St-Jacques by Marie de l'Incarnation, had witnessed the Lenten preaching of Bossuet in 1661, the vows of Mme de la Vallière in 1675, and the funeral oration of the Princess Palatine in 1685; the other, founded in 1664 and established in the Avenue de Saxe in 1854, possessed a miraculous crucifix, rescued intact from the flames at the capture of Besançon by Louis XIV. Paris still possesses two Visitation monasteries, which date respectively from 1619 and 1626. They were founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane-Frances de Chantal, and in the middle of the nineteenth century one of them had as superior Venerable Marie de Sales Chappuis. The Sisters of Charity, instituted in 1629 by St. Vincent de Paul and Venerable Mme Le Gras (née Louise de Marillac) and having their mother-house at Paris, still have the right to exercise their nursing activity, but are legally bound to discontinue gradually their work as teachers. Among the still existing congregations of women are: the Congregation of Adoration of Reparation, founded in 1848 by Mother Marie-Thérèse of the Heart of Jesus; the Helpers of the Souls in Purgatory, founded in 1856; the Helpers of the Immaculate Conception, founded in 1859 by the Abbé Largentier for the care of the sick in their homes; the Benedictine Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, founded in 1653 by Catherine de Bar - a second house was founded in 1816 by the Princess Louise de Bourbon-Condé (Mother Marie-Joseph de la Miséricorde).

SEMINARIES 

The Seminary of St-Sulpice, founded by Oiler in 1642, had been supplemented since 1814 by the house at Issy, in the suburbs of Paris, reserved for the teaching of philosophy. The Paris seminary was seized by the State in virtue of the recent laws, and the present theological school of the Parisian clergy is located at Issy. The seminary of Foreign Missions was founded in 1663. Twenty-eight houses were confided to it by the Holy See. This seminary belongs to the Society of Foreign Missions and is still authorized by the State, as also is the Seminary of the Holy Ghost, located in the mother-house of the Congregations of the Holy Ghost and the Immaculate Heart of Mary - the former was founded in 1703 by Poullard Desplace, the latter in 1841 by Venerable Francis-Mary-Paul Libermann, and the two were merged in 1848. This seminary provides priests for the evangelization of the negroes in Africa and the colonies. Neither has the State disturbed the Congregations of the Mission of St-Lazarus (Lazarists), founded by St. Vincent de Paul, with its mother-house at Paris. They devote themselves to the evangelization of the poor by means of missions and to the foreign missions. For a long time their chapel held the body of St. Vincent de Paul, now removed to Belgium. The Lazarist Blessed Jean-Gabriel Perboyre, martyred in China, is venerated here. With regard to the Irish College in Paris see IRISH COLLEGES.

OTHER RELIGIONS 

AS early as 1512 Lefèvre d'Etaples, at the Collège du Cardinal Lemoine, and Briçonnet, Abbot of St-Germain-des-Prés and shortly afterwards Bishop of Meaux, spread at Paris certain theological ideas which prepared the way for Protestantism. In 1521 Luther's book, "The Babylonian Captivity", was condemned by the Sorbonne. In 1524 Jacques Pavannes (or Pauvert), a disciple of Lefèvre, underwent capital punishment for having attacked the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, purgatory, and holy water; the same penalty was inflicted on Louis de Berquin in 1529. Until 1555 the Protestants of Paris had no pastor, but in that year they assembled at the house of one of their number, named La Ferrière. As he had a child to baptize, the gathering elected as pastor Jean le Maçon, a young man of twenty-two years, who had studied law. He exercised his ministry at Paris until 1562, when he took up his residence as pastor at Angers. The first general synod of the Reformed Church of France was held at Paris from 26 to 28 May, 1558, and drew up a confession of faith - later called the Confession of La Rochelle, because it only received its final form at the eighteenth national synod convened at La Rochelle in 1607. In 1560 a number of Protestants perished at Paris, among them the magistrate Anne du Bourg. It is estimated that the Reformed Church of Paris had 40,000 members in 1564. In 1572 took place the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Edict of July, 1573, having authorized the Protestants of Paris to assemble at a distance of two leagues from the city, they held their meetings at Noisy le Sec. In 1606 Henry IV permitted them to build a church at Charenton. During the seventeenth century the Reformed Church of Paris was administered by the pastors Dumoulin, Mestrezat, Durand, and Montigny. At the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) Pastor Claude was compelled to leave Paris; Pastors Malzac, Giraud, and Givry, who endeavoured despite the revocation to maintain a Protestant church at Paris, were imprisoned in 1692. During the eighteenth century the chaplains attached to the embassies of Protestant princes gave spiritual assistance to the Protestants of the city. Marron, chaplain at the Dutch embassy, became pastor in Paris when Louis XVI promulgated the edict of toleration (1787). A decree of 1802 gave over to the Protestant sect the old church of the Visitandines in the Rue St-Antoine (built by Mansart); one of 1811 gave them the church of the Oratorians in the Rue St-Honoré, while the July Monarchy gave them the old Church of Notre-Dame-de-Pentemont, which under the old régime had belonged to the Augustinian Sisters of the Incarnate Word of the Blessed Sacrament. At present the Reformed Church possesses nineteen places of worship in Paris and seventeen in the suburbs; the Lutherans, eleven places of worship in Paris and eight in the suburbs; the Protestant Free Churches, four places of worship; the Baptists, four churches in Paris and one in the suburbs. The American Episcopal, Anglican, Scotch, Congregationalist, and Wesleyan Churches conduct services in English. There are in Paris about 50,000 Jews.

PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND PUBLIC CHARITY 

Under the old régime, what is now called "Public Assistance" included several distinct departments:

• (1) that of the Hôtel-Dieu, one of the oldest hospitals in Europe, doubtless founded by the Bishop St. Landry after the epidemic of 651. It was at first directed by the canons of Notre-Dame, and after 1505 by a commission of citizens with whom Louis XIV associated, together with the Archbishop of Paris, several representatives of the Government and of the chief judiciary bodies. This department undertook the administration of the Hospital for Incurables, the Hospital of St. Louis, and that of St. Anne;

• (2) department of the General Hospital, created by Louis XIV in 1656 for the sick, the aged, children, and beggars, and with which were connected the infirmaries of Pitié, Bicêtre, the Salpètrière, Vaugirard, the foundling hospital, and that of the Holy Ghost;

• (3) several independent hospitals, e. g. Cochin Hospital, founded in 1680 by the Abbé Cochin, pastor of St-Jacques, and the Necker Hospital, established in 1779 at the initiative of Mme Necker;

• (4) the Bureau of Charity, dependent on the parishes;

• (5) the central Bureau of the Poor (grand bureau des pauvres), established under Francis I for the relief of the indigent. It was presided over and directed by the procureur général of the Parlement and levied a yearly "alms tax" on all the inhabitants of Paris. It administered the infirmary of Petites Maisons.

The Revolution effected a radical change in this system. The central Bureau des Pauvres was at first replaced by forty-eight beneficent committees (comités de bienfaisance); these were replaced in 1816 by twelve bureaux of charity, which in 1830 took the name of bureaux de bienfaisance and number twenty since 1860. While in the communes of France all the hospital departments are under an administration distinct from that of the bureau of beneficence, at Paris, in virtue of the law of 10 Jan., 1849, the General Administration of Public Assistance directs both the hospitals and the departments for relief at home. At present the Department of Public Assistance directs 31 hospitals, 14 being general hospitals, 7 special, 9 children's hospitals, and 1 insane asylum. At the laicization of the hospitals, the hospital of St. Joseph, conducted by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, was opened in 1884 under the patronage of the Archbishop of Paris; that of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, in care of the Augustines, was founded by Abbé Carton, pastor of St-Pierre-de-Montrouge and bequeathed by him in 1887 to the Archbishop of Paris. The hospital of Notre-Dame-de-Perpétuel-Secours at Lavallois is conducted by the Dominican Sisters. The St-Jacques, Hahnemann, St-François, and St-Michel hospitals are also in the hands of congregations. The Villepinte Institution, in charge of the Sisters of Marie Auxiliatrice, cares for children and young women suffering from tuberculosis. The Marie-Thérèse infirmary was founded for aged or infirm priests by the wife of Châteaubriand. The Little Sisters of the Poor have nine houses in the diocese. The Brothers of St. John of God maintain a private hospital and an asylum for incurable young men. The Institution of the Ladies of Calvary, founded at Lyons in 1842 by Mme Gamier and established at Paris in 1874, is conducted by widows for the care of the cancerous, and receives into its infirmaries patients whom no other hospital will admit; it also has houses at Lyons, Marseilles, St. Etienne, and Rouen. The Little Sisters of the Assumption, nurses of the poor, who have nine houses in the diocese, stay night and day without pay in the houses of the sick poor. The same is done by the Sisters of Notre-Dame of the Rue Cassini in the homes of poor women in their confinement. Other orders for the care of the sick in their homes are the Franciscan nursing sisters (7 houses) and the Sisters Servants of the Poor (4 houses).

Among the institutions now dependent on the State, the foundation of which was formerly the glory of the Church, must be mentioned that of Quinze Vingts for the blind. As early as the eleventh century there was a confraternity for the blind; St. Louis built for it a house and a church, gave it a perpetual revenue, and decreed that the number of the Quinze Vingts (300 blind) should be maintained complete. When the king was canonized in 1297 the blind took him as their patron (see EDUCATION OF THE BLIND). The Catholic institutions of Paris for the relief of the poor and the uplifting of the labouring classes are very numerous. For the Society of St. Vincent de Paul see MISSION, CONGREGATION OF PRIESTS OF THE. The Philanthropic Society, founded in 1780 under the protection of Louis XVI, established dispensaries, economical kitchens, night shelters, and settlement houses. The Central Office of Charitable Institutions investigates the condition of workmen and the poor, and conducts employment and restoration bureaux. The Association of Ladies of Charity, established (1629) in the parish of St-Sauveur by St. Vincent de Paul for the visitation of the sick poor and reconstituted in 1840, has given rise to the Society for the Sick Poor, the Society for the Sick Poor in the Suburbs, and the Society for the Visitation of the Poor in the Hospitals. Most parishes have their organizations of charitable women who, under the pastor's supervision, distribute clothing and visit the poor. The Société de Charité Maternelle, which dates from 1784, when it was patronized by Marie Antoinette, assists married women in their confinement without regard to creed. In each quarter of Paris women visitors determine the families deserving assistance. In 1898 the society assisted 2797 women and 2853 children. The Association des Mères de Famille, founded in 1836 by Mme Badenier, assists at childbirth women who do not meet the conditions required by the Société de Charité Maternelle or who are numbered among the disreputable poor. The Œuvre des Faubourgs, through a number of women, visits 2000 families and 8000 children in the Paris suburbs. The Œuvre de la Miséricorde (Work of Mercy), founded in 1822, assists the disreputable poor. An organization founded in 1841 by Mgr Christophe, later Bishop of Soissons, helps convalescent lunatics. The objects of the Œuvre de l'Hospitalité du Travail are to offer a free temporary shelter without distinction of creed or nationality to every homeless woman or girl who has determined to work for an honourable livelihood, to employ its clients at useful tasks, to endeavour to revive the habit of working in those who have lost it, and to assist them in securing honourable employment which will also enable them to provide for the future. This organization, founded in 1881 under the direction of Sister St. Antoine, a member of the Order of Calvary, between 1881 and 1903 gave shelter to 70,240 women. In 1894 Sister St. Antoine annexed to it the Œuvre du Travail à Domicile pour les Mères de Famille (Association for procuring home-work for mothers of families) which between 1892 and 1902 assisted 7449 mothers. The Maison de Travail for men, founded in 1892 by M. de Laubespin, performs the same service for unemployed and homeless men, and is also in charge of the Sisters of Calvary.

The Catholics of Paris have taken part in the syndicate movement by the creation in 1887 of the syndicate of commercial and industrial employees, by the organization of the Aiguille (a professional association of patronesses and women employees and workers on clothing), and by the Union Centrale, made up of five professional syndicates of working-girls, business employees, seamstresses, servant girls, and nurses, with "La Ruche syndicale" as their organ. The great Society of St. Nicholas, founded in 1827 by Mgr de Bervanger and Count Victor de Noailles and directed by a staff of Catholic laymen, has four houses (Paris, Issy, Igny, and Buzenval), where it gives a professional education to boys whom it adopts as early as their eighth year. The Society of the Friends of Childhood, founded in 1828, is concerned with the education and apprenticeship of poor boys. The Ecole commerciale de Francs Bourgeois, created in 1843 by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, prepares pupils for commercial, industrial, and administrative professions. Numerous homes and restaurants for young working girls have been founded by Catholics. The Charitable Society of St. Francis Regis was founded in 1826 by M. Gassin to facilitate the religious and civil marriage of the poor of the diocese and the legitimatization of their natural children. The day-nurseries, which care for children from 15 days to 3 years of age while their mothers are employed, date from M. Marbeau's foundation in 1844. The Sisters of St. Paul have founded in the parishes of St-Vincent-de-Paul and St-Séverin a society for the relief of mothers who wish their children to remain at home. The Œuvre de l'Adoption was founded in 1859 by Abbé Maitrias to gather as many orphans as possible. Out of so many other associations, the following must be mentioned: the Association des Jeunes Economes which, under the direction of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, uses the generous donations of a large number of young women for the apprenticing and employment of poor girls; the Society of St. Anne, founded in 1824; the Society for Abandoned Children, founded in 1803; the Society for the Adoption of Abandoned Little Girls, founded in 1879 (all concerned with finding homes for orphans); the Society of the Child Jesus, which shelters during their convalescence poor girls who have been discharged from hospitals.

There is a recent tendency towards the complete reorganization of Catholic charity in a single quarter by the centralization of all charitable departments for the development and protection of family life. For example the Fresh Air Society for Mothers and Children, founded by Mlle Chaptal in 1901, includes:

• (1) a department for the investigation of home conditions;

• (2) one for free consultations for poor mothers and their nursing children;

• (3) one for assisting mothers whose confinement takes place at home;

• (4) one for the distribution of tickets for meat, cereal, or farinaceous food for women who have been confined;

• (5) the fresh air department, which sends a number of the women of the district into the country.

The Society of Ste-Rosalie also combines a number of admirable works which perpetuate the memory of the good done in the Faubourg St-Marcel during the July Monarchy by Sister Rosalie Rendu, who worked in collaboration with Vicomte Armand de Mélun. The Working Women's Society of Our Lady of the Rosary was the nucleus of a flourishing parish in a district previously deprived of all religious help. The Union Familiale, founded at Charonne by Mlle Gahéry in 1899, has completely transformed the district; it has established a Fröbelian nursery for the small children, and receives children after school hours; since 1904 it assembles families in a family educational circle; it organizes groups of "little mothers," little girls of ten, who every Thursday take care of 3 or 4 children; it has gardening classes and a department for trousseaux, and since 1900 it has had vacation colonies, known as fresh air societies. The original congregation of the Blind Sisters of St. Paul, founded in 1851 by Abbé Juge and Anne Bergunion, looks after blind young women.

According to the report of the Abbé Fonsagrives to the Diocesan Congress of 1908, the Archdiocese of Paris has 356 Catholic patronages, of which 63 are for male pupils of the free schools, 79 for male pupils of the lay schools, 101 for female pupils of the free schools, 113 for female pupils of the lay schools. At that date lay patronages were only 245. The Society for the Patronage of Young Working Girls, founded in 1851, receives young girls after their First Communion. The Sisters of the Presentation of Tours conduct the association and society for mutual relief for young business women; the Sisters Servants of Mary and Sisters of the Cross secure situations for servants. The Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul have societies called "patronages internes", which shelter working-girls who are orphans or who live at a distance from their families. The Œuvre des Petites Préservées et le Vestiaire des Petits Prisonniers, founded in 1892 by the Comtesse de Biron, looks after the preservation of young girls discharged from prison. The Catholic International Society for the Protection of Young Women, organized at Freiburg in 1897 after the Organization of the Protestant International Union of the Friends of Young Women, in 1905 alone gave shelter to 11,919 young girls in Paris.

There is at present a great renewal in Catholic methods of charity and relief at Paris, the spirit of which is shown in the report concerning Catholic relief societies read (Aug., 1910) at the International Congress of Public and Private Relief held at Copenhagen under the presidency of President Loubet: "The great originality of Catholic relief work in recent years consists in the multiplication of works for social education. This arises more and more from the 'patriarchal' conception of these undertakings. The modern wish and tendency is to give him who suffers a share in his own relief, to give him a collaborative or directing part in the effort which is being made to assist and uplift him. Henceforth the favourite works of charity among Catholics will be those known as preventive. To prevent misery by an hygienic, domestic, professional education is the object of the founders of modern works of relief. They are concerned not only with the strife against the consequences of misery but with that against its production. Without neglecting individual alms, Catholic charity aims especially at social relief; it prefers to precede misery to prevent it, rather than to follow it to relieve it; it prefers to uplift families rather than assist them, to help them when they are stumbling rather than to raise them up when they have fallen; it prefers to help them actively to better working conditions, than to relieve passively the results of these evil conditions. All instruction imparted in organizations for Catholic youth and in the Catholic patronages of Paris is impregnated with this apparently new spirit which on closer view is seen to be merely a return to the Christian solidarity of the Middle Ages."

RELIGIOUS RENEWAL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

In 1905 at the end of the concordatory period the Diocese of Paris had 3,599,870 inhabitants, 38 parishes, 104 succursales, 7 vicariates, formerly remunerated by the State. Since the separation of Church and State, the religious character of Paris shows signs of renewal. Statistics of the religious and civil burials from 1883 to 1903, drawn up by the Abbé Raffin, afford a very exact idea of the religious condition of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. The largest proportion of civil burials, 23 per cent, was reached in 1884. At the end of the nineteenth century the proportion of civil burials had fallen to 18 per cent; from 1901 to 1903, they showed a tendency to rise to 20 per cent. Civil funerals take place chiefly among the poor. For example in 1888 in the five most costly classes of burials the number of civil burials did not exceed 45 per cent; on the other hand, the ninth class, which is the cheapest, and the free class show 25 to 30 per cent. At present among the wealthy classes there is a slight increase in the number of civil funerals, and a slight decrease among the working classes, but the fact remains that, despite the gratuitousness of religious assistance in the case of the poor, the average number of 10,000 civil funerals which take place yearly at Paris consists chiefly of funerals of the poor. One reason for this is the insufficiency of religious assistance in the hospitals. Although more than a third of the Parisians die in hospitals, there are only about thirty hospital chaplains, and these the management does not permit to approach the sick unless they are summoned. Another reason lies in the excessive size of suburban parishes and in the difficulty of reaching an immense fluctuating population. At the beginning of the twentieth century Notre-Dame-de-Ménilmontant had 70,000, St-Pierre-de-Montrouge 83,000, Notre-Dame-de-Clignancourt 120,000 inhabitants. For a long time these enormous parishes had no more priests than the smaller ones in the centre of Paris. At St-Ambroise there were 8 to 10 priests for 80,000 souls, while St-Thomas-d'Aquin had 8 priests for 14,000, and St-Sulpice 17 for 38,000 (see the report of M. Thureau Dangin, permanent secretary of the French Academy, concerning the Œuvre des chapelles de secours). M. Thureau Dangin calculated in 1905 that Paris, with its 522 pastors or curates, had an average of 37,000 or 38,000 souls to a parish, while at Lyons there was 1 priest for every 3000 souls, at Antwerp 1 for every 500, at New York 1 for every 1500.

The realization of this dearth and its dangers caused the organization of the Œuvre des Séminaires as early as 1882 to increase and facilitate vocations, and in 1905 Cardinal Richard pointed out the urgent necessity of the creation of about thirty new parishes or of chapelles de secours. At present the diocesan administration is most actively engaged in the organization of these chapelles de secours. Every year a dignitary of the French Academy or of the Institute presents a report of the progress made, MM. François Coppée, Thureau Dangin, de Mun, d'Haussonville, Georges Picot, and Etienne Lamy having been heard in turn. The Christian Doctrine Society (Œuvre des Catéchismes) founded in 1885 by Cardinal Richard was erected into a confraternity by Leo XIII on 30 May, 1893, with which all the catechetical societies of France may be affiliated. This society is formed of voluntary catechists and promoters paying dues. In addition to the multiplication of places of worship, special religious services have been organized for certain classes of persons. For example, the missionary work among young seamstresses (Midinettes) has developed greatly between 1908 and 1910; it consists of short instructions between 12:35 and 12:50 p.m., so that the young women may return punctually to work. More than 5000 working girls have profited by these missions. The Society of Diocesan Missions, founded in 1886 by Cardinal Richard, supports from 18 to 20 missionaries, who according to the report of their superior, the Abbé Gibergues, made to the Diocesan Congress of 1908, have brought back to the Church more than 40,000 persons in less than a quarter of a century. Lastly, the Archdiocese of Paris has assumed the direction of the Catholic social movement. In 1910 a social secretariat was organized, as a bureau of information and headquarters for social undertakings, and the archbishop has interested himself actively in the abolition of the night-work of bakers, addressing a letter to the parochial committees to arouse Catholic sentiment in favour of the claims of these workmen, and on 21 December, 1908, presiding at the meeting organized by the Jeunesse catholique française for the suppression of this work.

An interesting organization from the social point of view is that of the provincial associations formed at Paris under Catholic auspices to bring together the immigrants from each province, to assist them to maintain close ties among themselves, and to procure spiritual help in the loneliness of the great city. In 1892 was founded the society La Bretagne, and in 1895 the Union aveyronnaise. The latter, which had 1600 members in 1908, supports eight sisters who, in 1908 alone, spent 2641 days or nights with sick Aveyronnais. In imitation of this association were founded successively the Union lozérienne, the Association des Dames limousines et creusoises, the Union lyonnaise et forésienne, the Union pyrénéenne, the Alliance catholique savoisienne, and many others. There is a special society for the Bretons residing at Paris, which provides sermons and lectures in the Breton tongue. All the provincial unions are federated under the presidency of the Catholic economist, M. Henri Joly, a member of the Institut. A list of these associations has been affixed in recent times to the doors of all the churches in Paris. All these undertakings for the development of Christian life in Paris are studied and developed by the Diocesan Committee organized on 1 March, 1905, with a double aim:

• (1) "to sustain, promote, and unite under the archbishop's authority all movements concerning the religious, moral, social, and even material welfare of the diocese;"

• (2) "to promote the formation of parochial committees modelled on and connected with itself".

It is divided into five commissions, dealing respectively with works of religion and piety, instruction and education, perseverance and patronage, charitable and social works, and with the press and propaganda. At the beginning of 1910 there were 67 parochial committees, nearly half the parishes being already provided with them. Since 1905 diocesan congresses have taken place yearly. That of 1909 was especially concerned with the labour of women, with organizations for instruction of youth, provincial and journalistic organizations. That of 1910 dealt exclusively with liberty of teaching, the formation and recruiting of teachers, and with school books.

CATHOLIC INSTRUCTION IN PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

The suppression of the teaching congregations and the gradual but rapid closing of the establishments directed by them was a serious blow to the prosperity of the independent schools in the Archdiocese of Paris. In October, 1904, Cardinal Richard instituted a diocesan committee of "free instruction", which exhorted all the male and female teachers in private institutions to form separate diocesan associations. Mutual-aid societies were established in 1909 to provide for the future of these teachers, male and female, and in 1910 the diocese promulgated a regulation fixing the conditions of their promotion and granting certain guarantees for their professional future. On 8 December, 1906, arrangements were made for the supervision of religious instruction in the schools not under the public authorities, and in June, 1908, a board for the direction of secondary and primary diocesan instruction was created. From 1879 to 1910 the expenditure for the foundation and maintenance of the independent schools was $8,000,000, for which appeal was made to the charity of individuals. Their annual support costs about $600,000. Most of the schools are supported by a special committee by means of collections, subscriptions, etc.; some belong to civil societies which rent them to the committees, while others are wholly at the expense of the pastor. At the beginning of 1910 there were in the 162 parishes of Paris and its suburbs 217 independent schools, of which only 36 are still in the hands of congregations, and these also in virtue of the Associations Law are destined after a short time to be under the supervision of lay Catholics. The number of pupils frequenting these schools is estimated to be about 42,000. The "Jeunesse prévoyante du diocèse de Paris", established in 1902, constitutes a flourishing school mutual-aid society. A district union groups together thirty-five associations of former pupils of the independent schools (called Amicales), and is a bond among 4500 members. The initiative in domestic economy in Paris was taken by Catholics. Even before the public authorities had made sacrifices for this end, the Comtesse de Diesbach had established (15 June, 1902) a first course in domestic economy, lasting a month. It was succeeded by nine other courses in 1903-05, attended by 110 pupils, 60 of them religious from 14 orders. In 1905 was opened the Normal Institute of Domestic Economy which in its three first years gave to the independent schools 150 teachers of domestic economy. Higher Catholic education at Paris is assured by a number of institutions conducted by ecclesiastics, and by the Bossuet, Fenélon, Gerson, and Massillon schools, which send their pupils to the state lycées.

For the Institut Catholique, see PARIS, UNIVERSITY OF.

A. SOURCES. - BARROUX, Essai de bibliogr. critique des généralités de l'hist. de Paris (Paris, 1908), essential; POÈTE, Les sources de l'hist. de P. et les historiens de P. in Revue Bleue (18 and 25 Nov. 1905); TOURNEUX, Bibliogr. de l'hist. de P. pendant la Révolution française (4 vols., Paris, 1890-1906), especially III; Bull. de la Soc. de l'hist. de P. et de l'Ile de France (1874-); Bull. du Comité d'hist. et d'archéol. du dioc. de P. (1883-5); Bibliothèque d'hist. de P. (1909-).

B. GENERAL. - LEBEUF, Hist. de la ville et de tout le dioc. de P. (15 vols., Paris, 1754-58), new ed. by AUGIER (5 vols.); Tables (1 vol., Paris, 1884); BOURNON, Rectifications et Additions à l'Abbé Lebeuf (4 fascicles, Paris, 1890-1901); IDEM, P. hist., monuments, administration (Paris, 1888); IDEM, P. Atlas (Paris, 1900); CAIN, Promenades dans P., Pierres de P., Coins de P. (4 vols., Paris, 1905-10); DAVIS, About P. (New York, 1895); HARE, P. (London, 1896); MEMPES, P. (London, 1907); OKEY, P. and its Story (London, 1904); FRANKLIN, La vie privée d'autrefois. Arts et métiers, modes, mœurs, usages des Parisiens du XII^e au XVII^e siècle (27 vols., Paris, 1887-1902); HARRISON, Memorable P. Houses with illustrative, critical, and anecdotal notices (London, 1893).

C. ECCLESIASTICAL. - Gallia christ., VII (1744), 1-219, Instrumenta, 1-192; FISQUET, La France pontificale (2 vols., Paris, 1864-6); LONGNON, L'ancien dioc. de P. et ses subdivisions in Bull. du Comité d'hist. et d'archéol. du dioc. de P., I (1883), pp. 10-19; BERNARD, Les origines de l'église de P., établissement du christianisme dans les Gaules; saint Denys de P. (Paris, 1870); CHARTIER, L'ancien chapitre de Notre-Dame-de-P. et sa maîtrise (Paris, 1897); JAUNAY, Hist. des évêques et archevêques de P. (Paris, 1884); DEPOIN, Essai sur la chronologie des évêques de P. de 768 à 1138 in Bull. histor. et philol. (1906); FÉRET, L'abbaye de Ste-Geneviève et la congregation de France (Paris, 1883); BONNARD, Hist. de l'abbaye royale de l'ordre des chanoines réguliers de St-Victor (2 vols., Paris, 1908); BROUILLET, Les églises paroissiales de P. (monographs, Lyons, 1897-1904); LONERGAN, Historic Churches of P. (London, 1896); MORTET, Etude histor. et archéol. sur la cathédrale et le palais épiscopal de P. au VI^e et XII^e siècle (Paris, 1888); AUBERT, La cathédrale N.-D.-de-P. (Paris, 1909); HIATT, N.-D.-de-P., a Short History and Description of the Cathedral (London, 1902); DUPLESSY, P. religieux (Paris, 1900); D'AYZAC, Hist. de l'abbaye de St-Denis en France (2 vols., Paris, 1860-1); HAVET, Les origines de St-Denis (Paris, 1890); PARIS, Les grandes chroniques de France, selon qu'elles sont conservées en l'église de St-Denis (6 vols., Paris, 1830-9); VITRY AND BRIÈRE, L'église abbatiale de St-Denis (Paris, 1908); LESÊTRE, L'Immaculée Conception et l'Eglise de Paris (Paris, 1904); DOUMERGUE, Paris protestant au XVI^e siècle in Bull. de la Soc. du protestantisme français (1896); DOUEN, La Révocation de l'édit de Nantes à P. (3 vols., Paris, 1894); DECOPPET, P. protestant (Paris, 1876); ROBINET, Le mouvement religieux à P. pendant la Révolution, 1789-1801 (2 vols., Paris, 1896); DELARC, L'église de P. pendant la Révolution française, 1789-1801 (3 vols., Paris, 1895-8); GRENTE, Le culte catholique à P. de la Terreur au Concordat (Paris, 1903); PISANI, L'église de P. sous la Révolution (3 vols., Paris, 1909-10); DE LANZAC DE LABORIE, P. sous Napoléon, especially IV (Paris, 1907).

D. CHARITIES. - CHEVALIER, L'hôtel-Dieu de P. et les Sœurs Augustines (650 à 1810) (Paris, 1901); BRUNET, La charité paroissiale à P. au XVII^e siècle d'après les réglements des compagnies de charité (Caen, 1906); CAHEN, Le grand bureau des pauvres de P. au milieu du 18^e siècle (Paris, 1904); MAXIME DU CAMP, La charité privée à P. (Paris, 1885); IDEM, P. bienfaisant (Paris, 1888); DU THILLEUL, L'assistance publique à P., ses bienfaiteurs et sa fortune mobilière (2 vols., Paris, 1904); P. charitable et prévoyant, published by the Central Office of Charitable Institutions (3rd ed., Paris, 1904); Manuel des Œuvres (new ed., Paris, 1911), supplies the most recent information and a detailed description concerning all French Catholic charitable works, especially those of Paris.

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Further reading

• Cronin, Vincent (1989). Paris on the Eve, 1900–1914. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-312-04876-1.
• Cronin, Vincent (1994). Paris: City of Light, 1919–1939. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-215191-7.
• Favier, Jean (1997). Paris (in French). Fayard. ISBN 978-2-213-59874-1.
• Hillairet, Jacques (2005). Connaissance du Vieux Paris (in French). Rivages. ISBN 978-2-86930-648-6.
• Jones, Colin (2004). Paris: The Biography of a City. New York: Penguin Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-03393-5.
• Marchand, Bernard (1993). Paris, histoire d'une ville: XIXe-XXe siècle (in French). Paris: Le Seuil. ISBN 978-2-02-012864-3.
• Wakeman, Rosemary (2009). The Heroic City: Paris, 1945–1958. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-87023-6.

External links

• Official website (in French)