Historical Landmarks

c.250BC Celtic settlement in the Paris area.

52BC Roman conquest and founding of Lutetia on the Left Bank.

508 Clovis, King of the Franks, makes Paris his capital.

987 Hugues Capet elected King of France.

1420 The English occupy Paris.

1431 Henry VI of England crowned King of France.

1436 English expelled.

1594 Henri IV enters Paris.

1682 Louis XIV moves court to Versailles.

1789 Storming of Bastille starts French Revolution.

1793 Execution of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette; Reign of Terror.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes emperor.

1814–15 Fall of Napoleon; restoration of Bourbon monarchy.

1830 Bourgeois revolution; Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King.

1848 Revolution brings Louis-Napoleon to power.

1870–1 Franco-Prussian War; Second Empire ends; Paris besieged.

1871 Paris Commune – 10 weeks of workers’ rule.

1900 First Métro line opened.

1914–18 World War I. Germans advance to within eight miles of Paris.

1939 World War II begins.

1940 French government capitulates; Germans occupy Paris.

1944 Free French and other Allied forces liberate Paris.

1958 Fall of Fourth Republic. De Gaulle becomes president.

1968 Student riots, workers’ general strikes.

1977 Jacques Chirac becomes first elected mayor since 1871.

1981 President Mitterrand elected president.

1995 Jacques Chirac elected president.

2002 The euro replaces the franc as France’s unit of currency.

2007 Nicolas Sarkozy elected president.

2008 Bertrand Delanoë re-elected mayor.

2012 Socialist François Hollande elected president.

2014 Paris looks set to elect its first female mayor in municipal elections.