The inhabitants of Paris are known as Parisians in English, as Parisiens in French, and as Parigots in French slang.
Algeria gained its independence in 1962 and over 700,000 French colonists and pro-French Algerians migrated to the mother country, many to Paris. In response, the government built huge new residential suburbs - the now-notorious banlieues of Paris - which rapidly gained a reputation for soulless architecture, deprivation, racial tension and crime.
The city's escape from Attila proved a short-lived reprieve, as it was attacked and overrun in 464 by Childeric I (Childeric the Frank). His son Clovis I made the city his capital in 506 and was buried there on his death in 511, alongside St. Geneviéve.
His great-grandson Louis XV became king at the age of only five, with Philip of Orleans serving as regent. The Court returned to Paris, with the new king installed in the Palais-Royal. Philip quickly gained a reputation for corruption and debauchery. His involvement in the financial scandal of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 greatly discredited him, freeing Louis XV to move the court back to Versailles.
The city's status was reflected in the construction of grandiose new monuments, such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Eglise du Dome in which Napoleon's body was interred. Much of the population, however, lived in appalling conditions in diseased slums; a cholera outbreak in 1831 killed over 19,000 people.
Citizens of Paris elect in each arrondissement some municipal council members. Each arrondissement has its own council, which elects the mayor of the arrondissement. Some members of the arrondissement councils form the Council of Paris, which elects the mayor of Paris, and has the double functions of a municipal council and the general council of the département.
Several schools on the Left Bank were grouped together into the Sorbonne, which counts Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas among its early scholars. In the Middle Ages Paris prospered as a trading and intellectual nucleus, interrupted temporarily when the Black Death struck in the 14th century. Under the reign of King Louis XIV, the Sun King, from 1643 to 1715, the royal residence was moved from Paris to nearby Versailles.
The city of Paris is itself a département of France (Paris, 75), part of the Ile-de-France région. Paris is divided into twenty numerically arranged districts, the arrondissements. These districts are numbered in a spiral pattern with the 1er arrondissement at the center of the city.
Under Louis XVI, Paris reached new heights of prestige as a centre of the arts, sciences and philosophy. It was in Paris that the Montgolfier brothers made their historic balloon ascents in 1783. However, the French state was by now virtually bankrupt, its finances drained by the Seven Years' War and the French intervention in the American War of Independence.
Louis and those who supported an agreement with the monarchy were accused by the radical Jacobins of being the stooges of foreign powers, and on 10 August 1792 a mob demanded that the National Assembly depose the king. When the demand was refused, the mob attacked the Tuilleries and seized the royal family. Power now passed to the radical Commune de Paris, led by Georges Danton, Marat and Robespierre.
The furious crowd began attacking the palace and were only placated when Louis himself appeared and agreed to return to Paris with his family. The royal family were reduced to virtual prisoners in the Tuileries. They tried to escape on 20 June 1791 but were caught and returned to Paris as captives.
The lines stayed mostly static for the next four years, with Paris experiencing the occasional bombardment from enemy aircraft and the giant "Big Bertha" long-distance artillery guns. The city's hedonistic life survived for a while before being subdued by the bloodshed on the front and the impact of rationing and a devastating flu epidemic in 1916. The war was finally ended by the Armistice of 11 November 1918, signed at Compiegne to the northeast of Paris.
Paris is densely covered by a metro system, the Métro, as well as by a large number of bus lines. This interconnects with a high-speed regional network, the RER, and also the train network: commuter lines, national train lines, and the TGV (or derivatives like Thalys or Eurostar for specific destinations). There are two tangential tramway lines in the suburbs: Line T1 runs from Saint-Denis to Noisy-le-Sec, line T2 runs from La Défense to Issy. A third line along the southern orbital road is currently under construction.