Camping Disneyland Paris Sources of camping disneyland paris resources from the Web

Greater Paris metropolitan area, with a total GDP higher than Australia, is the largest financial and business center of continental Europe (on par with London), harboring more than 30% of France's white-collar population, as well as more than 40% of the headquarters of French companies, with the largest business district of Europe (La Défense), and the 2nd largest stock exchange in Europe (Euronext).

Administratively speaking, the public transportation networks of the Paris region are coordinated by the Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France (STIF), formerly Syndicat des transports parisiens (STP). official site (http://www.stif-idf.fr/) Members of the syndicate include the RATP, which operates the Parisian and some suburban busses, the Métro, and sections of the RER; the SNCF, which operates the rest of the RER and the suburban train lines; and other operators.

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.

Royalist France achieved its greatest heights under Louis XIV, the "Sun King." His minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert undertook lavish building projects in Paris in an effort to make it a "new Rome" fit for the Sun King. The king himself, however, detested Paris, preferring instead to rule France from his vast chateau at Versailles. The city had by this time grown far beyond its medieval boundaries, with some 500,000 inhabitants and 25,000 houses by the mid-17th century.

The next four years saw an increasingly brutal occupation regime imposed on the city. On the surface, things continued much as before - the "City of Light" was an extremely popular assignment for German forces and a favourite destination for those with time off.

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.

Lutetia was a prosperous place and occupied a very strategic position on the river, controlling shipping in both directions. It came under Roman control after the revolt of 52 BC when Vercingetorix led a Celtic uprising against the Romans under Caesar.

During the latter half of the 18th century, Paris became the intellectual and cultural capital of the Western world. It became a centre of the Enlightenment with its salons becoming the centre of the new thinking of the "Age of Reason." This was positively encouraged by the state, with Louis' mistress Madame de Pompadour supporting the city's intellectuals and prompting the king to construct striking new monuments.

The Louvre was redeveloped and acquired its spectacular glass pyramid, while a futuristic new district was constructed just outside the city limits at La Defense. The Opéra Bastille and Bibliotheque Nationale de France François Mitterrand proved less successful, experiencing big cost overruns and a series of technical problems.

After the restoration of civilian rule and the proclamation of the Fourth Republic in 1946, Paris made a rapid recovery from the war, aided by its lack of much physical damage. Like the rest of France, however, it was caught up in the bloody but unsuccessful wars against nationalist guerrillas in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Algerian war of independence, independentists detonated bombs in Paris.

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 town sided with the rebels and was said to have contributed 8,000 men to Vercingetorix's army. It was garrisoned by Vercingetorix's lieutenant Camulogenus, whose army camped on the Mons Lutetius (where the Panthéon is now situated). The Romans crushed the rebels at nearby Melun and took control of Lutetia.

Extreme right- and left-wing parties flourished, and on 5 February 1934 a mob of Fascist and other far-rightists attempted to storm the National Assembly in a botched coup attempt. In the ensuing violence, fifteen people were killed and another 1,500 wounded. In response, the Socialists and Communists united to form a Popular Front, which took power in 1936 but fell only a year later.