Welcome to Paris

Paris is located on the banks of the Seine river.

A sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones,  the Parisii,  inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. They traded with many river towns (some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula) and minted their own coins.

The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and began their settlement on Paris’s Left Bank (Rive Gauche). The Romans named their town 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 would later become 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 for “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. Many French kings are buried there.

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. Fortification of the Île de la Cité failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris’s strategic importance (with its bridges preventing ships from passing) was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris (885–886).  Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France and is one of the few world capitals that has rarely seen destruction by catastrophe or war.