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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.

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.

Under Napoleon's rule, Paris became the capital of an empire and military superpower. He crowned himself Emperor in a ceremony held in Notre-Dame on 18 May 1804. Like his royal predecessors, he saw Paris as a "new Rome" and set about building public monuments befitting the capital of an empire. Some of these were conscious copies of great Roman buildings, such as the Église de la Madeleine.

Citizens of Paris elect in each arrondissement some municipal council members. Each arrondissement has its own council, which elects the mayor of the arrondissement. Some members of the arrondissement councils form the Council of Paris, which elects the mayor of Paris, and has the double functions of a municipal council and the general council of the département.

Paris was, however, not spared from the religious violence affecting the rest of the country as Protestantism gained ground in defiance of an increasingly harsh Catholic backlash. Paris was a predominantly Catholic city - so much so that Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus there in 1534 - but also had a growing Protestant population. The rival religious factions pursued an increasingly bloodthirsty feud, with religiously-inspired assassinations and burnings at the stake.

With the recapture of the city, the Valois monarchs and French nobility sought to impose their authority on the city through the construction of various grandiose ecclesiastical and secular monuments, including churches and mansions. Over the following century the city's population more than tripled. Francois I had probably the greatest impact of any Valois monarch, transforming the Louvre and establishing a glittering court including such notables as Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini.

The following day, 14 July the mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille. A brief battle ensued in which 87 revolutionaries were killed before the fortress surrendered. This event marked the first real manifestation of the Revolution, and is still marked in France as Bastille Day.