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As an exception to the normal rules for French cities, some powers normally vested in the mayor of the city are instead vested in a representative of the national government, the Prefecture of Police which also controls the Paris Fire Brigade. As an example, Paris has no municipal police force, though it has some traffic wardens. This is a legacy of the situation that up to 1977, Paris had no mayor and was essentially run by the prefectoral administration.

The city of Paris also comprises two forests: the Bois de Boulogne on the west and the Bois de Vincennes on the east.

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.

Influent members of Chirac's party, such as Alain Juppé, were convicted of such felonies. Chirac successfully asserted presidential immunity from prosecution, but some sort of legal action seems inevitable when his shield of immunity evaporates on leaving office.

Napoleon's brief return from exile in 1815 saw him pass through Paris, en route to destiny at Waterloo on 18 June. His replacements, the restored Bourbon monarchs Louis XVIII (1814, 1815-1824) and Charles X (1824-1830), managed between them to provoke yet another revolution in Paris, confirming the saying that the Bourbons could "learn nothing and forget nothing."

Paris was occupied by a Gallic tribe until the Romans arrived in 52 BC. The invaders referred to the previous occupants as the Parisii, but called their new city Lutetia, meaning "marshy place". About fifty years later the city had spread to the left bank of the Seine, now known as the Latin Quarter, and had been renamed "Paris".

When Hitler invaded France on 14 May 1940 it took the German army only a month to reach Paris, invading through neutral Belgium around the Maginot Line, where the French defenses were massed. Paris fell with virtually no resistance on 14 June. Much of the city's population fled, with 1.6 million of its 3.5 million people leaving between May and June 1940.

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).

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.

The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 saw further major changes to the city's appearance and politics. The socialist Mitterrand frequently clashed with the powerful and abrasive Jacques Chirac, mayor of the city since 1977. Mitterrand undertook a number of grandiose grands projets to stamp his mark on the city.

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.