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The history of Paris spans over 2,000 years, during which time the city grew from a small Celtic settlement to the multicultural capital of a modern European state.

Royalist France achieved its greatest heights under Louis XIV, the "Sun King." His minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert undertook lavish building projects in Paris in an effort to make it a "new Rome" fit for the Sun King. The king himself, however, detested Paris, preferring instead to rule France from his vast chateau at Versailles. The city had by this time grown far beyond its medieval boundaries, with some 500,000 inhabitants and 25,000 houses by the mid-17th century.

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.

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.

After the restoration of civilian rule and the proclamation of the Fourth Republic in 1946, Paris made a rapid recovery from the war, aided by its lack of much physical damage. Like the rest of France, however, it was caught up in the bloody but unsuccessful wars against nationalist guerrillas in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Algerian war of independence, independentists detonated bombs in Paris.

As early as the 12th century, the distinctive character of the city's districts was emerging. The Ile de la Cité, on which the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was built in 1163, was the centre of government and religious life; the Left Bank was the centre of learning, focusing on the various Church-run schools established there; and the Right Bank was the centre of commerce and finance. A league of merchants, the so-called Hanse Parisienne, was established and quickly became a powerful force in the city's affairs.

The city emerged into an energetic but restless interwar period, enlivened by the arrival of glamorous émigrés such as Josephine Baker. It was a troubled political period, however, especially when the Great Depression hit Paris.

Chirac also suffered problems, although he was lucky that the worst of these did not emerge until after his election as President in May 1995. He was soon embroiled in a number of corruption scandals, many dating from his period as mayor when - allegedly - corrupt "favours" for relatives and party supporters were granted.