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The original Latin name of Paris was Lutetia, known in French as Lutèce. The name was later changed into Paris, based on the name of the Gallic parisi tribe.

Less positively and very controversially, the ancient market at Les Halles was demolished and replaced with a notoriously ugly underground shopping mall, and the 209m Tour Montparnasse skyscraper was built leading to fears that Paris would become overrun with American-style skyscrapers (a move strongly resisted ever since).

Although the Third Republic was widely disliked for its political instability and corruption, it did manage to deliver a golden age - a belle epoque - for Paris. The city acquired many distinctive new monuments and public buildings, foremost among them the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the World Exhibition of 1889. It was renowned as a centre for the arts, with the Impressionists taking their inspiration from its new vistas.

The revolutionaries became steadily more extreme, turning on the "enemy within." This included not just royalists but those accused of simply being not sufficiently revolutionary, including Danton and Camille Desmoulins. Over 1,300 people were executed in just six weeks in 1794. In the end, the extremists' bloodthirstiness destroyed their own moral standing; a group of moderates seized control in July 1794, sending Robespierre and his allies to the guillotine in a last spasm of bloodletting.

Paris is the capital city of France, as well as the capital of the Île-de-France région, whose territory encompasses Paris and its suburbs. The city of Paris proper is also a département, called Paris département (French: département de Paris).

By this time, Paris was a typically crowded early medieval city with timber buildings alongside surviving Roman remains. According to the chronicler Geoffrey of Tours, it suffered a disastrous fire in 585. The city grew beyond the boundaries of the Ile, with suburbs being established on both banks of the river.

In June 1944, Allied forces (including the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle) invaded Normandy. Two months later they broke through German lines and advanced rapidly across France. An uprising broke out in Paris on 19 August, led by the Resistance and the city's Police.