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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.

Under de Gaulle's successors, Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Paris underwent major physical development. The radical Centre Pompidou was built along with the ultra-modern complex at La Villette (originally an abattoir, now a science museum).

Civil war broke out in France after the assassination of Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans by the Burgundian John the Fearless. In the ensuing chaos, the English captured Paris in 1420. In 1422, Henry V of England died at the Chateau de Vincennes, just outside the city.

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

The combination of social unrest and a somewhat authoritarian, though democratic, government under de Gaulle proved explosive and in early May 1968 an uprising duly broke out, led by Parisian students and factory workers. The evenements (events) fizzled out amidst violence between police and demonstrators, but had a significant long-term effect, eventually forcing the retirement of de Gaulle and the overdue social liberalisation of the country. Many of the leaders of the May 1968 demonstrations went on to play significant roles in local and national politics.

The area of modern Paris has been inhabited since at least the fourth millennium BC, although little is known about these early inhabitants. The first known permanent settlement on the site was founded about 250 BC by a Celtic tribe called the Parisii, who established a fishing village on the Seine island that was later to become the Ile de la Cité. This was known as Lutetia, a name first recorded by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars.

Paris is densely covered by a metro system, the Métro, as well as by a large number of bus lines. This interconnects with a high-speed regional network, the RER, and also the train network: commuter lines, national train lines, and the TGV (or derivatives like Thalys or Eurostar for specific destinations). There are two tangential tramway lines in the suburbs: Line T1 runs from Saint-Denis to Noisy-le-Sec, line T2 runs from La Défense to Issy. A third line along the southern orbital road is currently under construction.

Henri III had nominated Henri of Navarre, a Protestant, as his heir. The new king, Henri IV, converted to Catholicism in 1594 with the declaration that "Paris is well worth a mass," thus convincing the Parisians to accept him as their king. He undertook a number of major public works in the city but faced constant danger from religious fanatics on both sides, particularly after granting religious tolerance to Protestants under the Edict of Nantes. After surviving at least 23 assassination attempts, he fell victim to a Catholic fanatic on 14 May 1610.

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.

Tensions were high, and led to the largest abuse in the city's postwar history, when the Paris police, told wrong news about policemen having been murdered by independentists, massacred an estimated 300 pro-independence demonstrators on 17 August 1961; remarkably, the event, though known in some circles, was largely ignored until the 1990s. (See Paris massacre of 1961)