Notes

History of Paris

Some of the world’s most important architectural developments were made in Paris, from the lightness of the Gothic style (at the Basilica of St-Denis) to the Modernist villas of Le Corbusier. Both of these styles have a lot in common, in fact, as they are both premised on the principle of spacious uncluttered interiors and the allowance of the maximum amount of light. Gothic’s huge windows were divided by only the slimmest of stone tracery which gave it the effect of a wall of glass, something remarkably similar to the curtain wall of Modernism centuries later.

Paris’ patron saint is Sainte Geneviève, a wealthy 5th-century Gallo-Roman landowner who gathered her friends together to pray that the city would be spared when Huns invaded in 451 CE. Their prayers were answered and there is a shrine to her in St-Etienne-du-Mont, on the appropriately named Place Ste-Geneviève, as well as a statue of her by Michel-Louis Victor, from 1845, in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Paris may be famous for its Gothic architecture, but it also has a strong affinity with Ancient Greece and Rome, and many of the city’s place names reflect this. The Champs-Elysées (Elysian Fields – a sort of heaven in ancient Greece), the Champ-de-Mars (Field of Mars – the Roman god of war – a poetic term for battlefield) is the name of the old military drilling ground between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire, not to mention Montparnasse (Mount Parnassus), Apollo’s sacred mountain and home of the muses. Apollo was also the icon of King Louis XIV who sought to emulate the Greek god when he crowned himself Sun King – the palace of Versailles and its gardens revel in Apollonian imagery.

The capital and largest city in France, Paris straddles the River Seine and sits at the heart of the region known as the Ile-de-France. Estimated to have a population of well over two million, the city’s wider metropolis is home to almost 12 million. One of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, the city receives approximately 45 million visitors a year.

The earliest evidence of permanent settlement dates from around 4200 BCE, and a Celtic tribe known as the Parisii were said to have lived here around 250 BCE. The Romans under Julius Caesar then conquered the region in 53 BCE and established a city on Ile de la Cité that stretched as far as Place Ste-Geneviève. Originally called Lutetia, this was later changed to the more French-sounding Lutèce. With the collapse of the Roman empire in the 5th century, the city was invaded by Germanic tribes and fell into decline, shrinking to a small fortified garrison on the island. This was when it changed its name back to Paris.

The city remained under the control of the Germanic Franks from the late 5th century onwards, with King Clovis founding the Merovingian dynasty and establishing the city as his capital in 508. By the late 8th century the Carolingian dynasty took over and moved their Frankish capital to Aachen in Germany.

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