Paris (: French Pronunciation

Paris (French pronunciation: [paʁi] ( listen)) is the capital and most populous city of France, with
an area of 105 square kilometres (41 square miles) and an official estimated population of
2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019.[1] Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of
Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts.
The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region,
which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the
population of France.[1] The Paris Region had a GDP of €709 billion ($808 billion) in 2017.
[3] According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018,
Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, and ahead
of Zürich, Hong Kong, Oslo and Geneva.[4] Another source ranked Paris as most expensive,
on a par with Singapore and Hong Kong, in 2018.[5]
The city is a major railway, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international
airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle (the second busiest airport in Europe) and Paris-Orly.[6]
[7] Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million
passengers daily,[8] and is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow
Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, but the first located
outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. [9]
Paris is especially known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was
the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors.[10]
[11] The Musée d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet, and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for
their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art
Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, and
the Musée Rodin and Musée Picasso exhibit the works of the two noted Parisians. The
historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site,
and popular landmarks in the city centre include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and
the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité; the Eiffel Tower,
constructed for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889; the Grand Palais and Petit Palais,
built for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900; the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-
Élysées, and the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur on the hill of Montmartre.
Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest
numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany
and China.[12][13] It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in
2017, after Bangkok and London.[14]
The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in
Paris. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just
north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French
Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris hosted the
Olympic Games in 1900, 1924 and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, and
the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships were also held in the city and,
every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there.
Aside from the 20th-century addition of the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes and
the Paris heliport, Paris' 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. This problem was 'resolved' when its 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.[145] Long-intended measures to unite Paris with its suburbs began on
1 January 2016, when the Métropole du Grand Paris came into existence.[116]
Paris' 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:
[146] two of his most ambitious projects for the Region were the construction of five
suburban "villes nouvelles" ("new cities")[147] and the RER commuter train network.
[148] 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:
[149] These districts were socially mixed at first,[150] but few residents actually owned their
homes (the growing economy made these accessible to the middle classes only from the
1970s).[151] 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 possibilities. [151]
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 the city, they
are grouped mainly in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, and to a lesser extreme 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.[152]
The Paris agglomeration's urban sociology is basically that of 19th-century Paris: its
fortuned classes are situated in its west and southwest, and its middle-to-lower classes are
in its north and east. The remaining areas are mostly middle-class citizenry dotted with
islands of fortuned populations located there due to reasons of historical importance,
namely Saint-Maur-des-Fossés to the east and Enghien-les-Bains to the north of Paris.[153]

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Paris (French pronunciation: [paʁi] ( listen)) is the capital and most populous city of France, with

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