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Under the rule of Philippe Auguste, who became king in 1180, a number of major building works were carried out in Paris. He built a new city wall and began the construction of the Louvre Palace, as well as paving streets and establishing a covered market at Les Halles (where it would remain until 1969).

The Merovingian kings died out in 751, to be replaced by the Carolingians. Pépin was proclaimed king of the Franks in 751, to be succeeded by Charlemagne, who moved the capital of his Holy Roman Empire from Paris to Aachen.

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 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.

The river Seine is well known for its tree-lined quais (walks along the river banks), open-air bookstalls and historic bridges that connect the Right and Left banks. Paris is also famous for its tree-lined boulevards such as the Champs-Élysées, and for its many architectural gems.

Locally, inhabitants of the Paris suburbs are known as banlieusards. Inhabitants of the whole Paris metropolitan area are known as Franciliens, i.e. from Île-de-France.

Prior to 1968, département 75 was the Seine département, which contained the city of Paris and its immediate suburbs. The splitting up of the Seine département resulted in the creation of four new départements: Paris proper (75), and three départements (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne) forming a ring around Paris, often called la petite couronne (i.e. the "small ring", as opposed to the "large ring" of the more distant suburbs of Paris).

The arrival in Paris of the Industrial Revolution prompted the city's breakneck growth, with migrant workers arriving from the countryside on newly-constructed railway lines. By now its population was over 900,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in Europe and far surpassing any other city in France (the next largest, Lyon and Marseille, had only about 115,000 each).

The government agreed an armistice with the invaders and moved south to Vichy, while Paris remained - along with two thirds of France - under German occupation. Hitler himself arrived on 23 June to inspect his latest conquest and, in a famous piece of film footage, seem to dance a triumphant jig below the Eiffel Tower (this effective piece of Allied propaganda was created by film maker John Grierson, who looped a few frames of Hitler stomping his foot once in delight, making the dictator appear to dance).

The following month, more than 2,000 people were massacred in Paris as revolutionary mobs hunted down and killed anyone seen as an opponent of the new order. The monarchy was formally abolished on 22 September 1792, "Day I of Year I of the French Republic."

Napoleon's military campaigns against the British, Austrians and Russians initially met with great success but hubris, overconfidence and poor planning caused the annihilation of his army in 1813 in the depths of a Russian winter. Russian and Austrian armies invaded France in 1814 and on 31 March 1814, Paris fell to the Russians - the first time in 400 years that the city had been conquered by a foreign power.

The French Crown initially controlled little more than Paris and the surrounding region, the Ile de France, but over the centuries steadily expanded its territory and power. Paris itself developed an increasing degree of importance as a royal capital, a centre of learning and an ecclesiastical centre.

Fierce fighting broke out a few days later as government troops retook the city district by district. It only ended on 29 March, by which time an estimated 4,000-5,000 people on both sides had been killed. In the aftermath, another 10,000 Communards were shot, 40,000 were arrested and 5,000 were deported.