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The city is the hub of France's motorway network, and is surrounded by an orbital road, the Périphérique. On/off ramps of the Peripherique are called 'Portes', as they correspond to the city gates. Most of these 'Portes' have parking areas and a metro station, where non-residents are advised to leave cars. Traffic in Paris is notoriously heavy, slow and tiresome.

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.

Louis XIII became king at the age of only eight, with political power exercised by his mother Marie de Médicis in the role of regent. Although Louis took over when he reached the age of majority, at 15, the real power was exercised by the brilliant but ruthless Cardinal Richelieu, who greatly expanded royal power.

The victor was, to the surprise of many, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte - the nephew of the late Emperor. He won by an overwhelming majority (receiving 75% of the votes cast) but was not content with being a mere president. On 2 December 1851 he seized power in a coup, declared himself the Emperor Napoleon III and settled in the Tuileries Palace.

A concentration camp was established in the Parisian suburb of Drancy to serve as a waystation en route to Auschwitz. Some 70,000 people passed through the camp. Contrary to later assertions by postwar French governments, the camp was run by the French authorities on behalf of the Nazis until July 1943, and the roundups were orchestrated by the Vichy French police. This was only acknowledged by the French government in 1995 and memorialised only as recently as 2001.

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 new rulers organised themselves into a five-man Directoire but had only a shaky grip on power. In 1795 they were saved from a royalist revolt by a young army officer named Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed a hostile Parisian mob by the simple expedient of firing into it with cannons at point-blank range.

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 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.

The Capetian line died out in 1328, leaving no male heir. Edward II of England claimed the French throne by virtue of his descent (via his mother) from Philip IV of France. This was rejected by the French barons, who supported the rival claim of Philippe of Valois (Philip VI of France). The Hundred Years' War thus began, followed swiftly by the arrival of the Black Death.

The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Many of the conflicts in the next few years were between Paris and the outlying rural areas.

The Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes were both transformed into large public parks. Although Haussmann was forced to resign in 1869 after financial irregularities, his scheme is largely responsible for the present-day look and layout of Paris.

At the same time, Paris acquired a less savoury reputation as the "sin capital of Europe", with hundreds of brothels, revues and risqué cabarets such as the famous Moulin Rouge. The city also acquired its metro system, opened in 1900.

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).

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.