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Paris became the scene of revolutionary ferment, with political clubs taking over buildings for their headquarters. The uprising had, however, badly disrupted food supplies and in October an angry crowd marched to Versailles to protest - whereupon Marie Antoinette allegedly dismissed them with her famous remark, "let them eat cake."

Paris is served by two principal airports: Orly Airport, which is south of Paris, and the Charles De Gaulle International Airport in nearby Roissy-en-France. A third and much smaller airport, at the town of Beauvais, 70km (45 miles) to the north of the city, is used by charter and low-cost airlines. Le Bourget airport nowadays only hosts business jets, air trade shows and the aerospace museum.

Less positively and very controversially, the ancient market at Les Halles was demolished and replaced with a notoriously ugly underground shopping mall, and the 209m Tour Montparnasse skyscraper was built leading to fears that Paris would become overrun with American-style skyscrapers (a move strongly resisted ever since).

It was under Napoleon's rule that Paris in its modern form was created. In 1853 he appointed Baron Haussmann as Prefect, charged with modernising the city. This Haussmann did to a drastic extent, demolishing much of the old city and replacing it with a network of wide, straight boulevards and radiating circuses.

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.

Known worldwide as the City of Light (la Ville Lumière), Paris has been a major tourist destination for centuries. The city is renowned for the beauty of its architecture, its urban perspectives and avenues, as well as the wealth of its museums. Built on an arc of the River Seine, it is divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to the south.

Lutetia was renamed Paris in 212, after the local tribe, but the rest of the 3rd and 4th century was wracked by war and civil unrest. The city came under attack from barbarian invaders, prompting the construction of a defensive city wall. In 357 the Emperor Constantine's nephew Julian arrived in Paris to become the city's new governor. Although his uncle was famously the emperor who declared Christianity the official religion of the Empire, Julian "the Apostate" strove to roll back its advance. He became emperor in 361 but died in battle only two years later.

The name of the city comes from the name of a Gallic tribe (parisis) inhabiting the region at the time of the Roman conquest. The historical heart of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small island largely occupied by the huge Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. It is connected with the smaller Ile Saint-Louis (another island) occupied by elegant houses built in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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.

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".

The arrival in Paris of the Industrial Revolution prompted the city's breakneck growth, with migrant workers arriving from the countryside on newly-constructed railway lines. By now its population was over 900,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in Europe and far surpassing any other city in France (the next largest, Lyon and Marseille, had only about 115,000 each).

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

In March 2001, Paris voted for a left-wing mayor for the first time since 1871. Bertrand Delanoë made history not only as the first left-wing mayor for 130 years, but for the fact that he is the first openly gay man to hold such a high public position in France. His election was widely seen as a rejection by the electorate of the corruption of the Chirac era. His manifesto promised to tackle the city administration's corruption and inefficiency, as well as reducing crime and improving education - all while keeping taxation stable.

The lines stayed mostly static for the next four years, with Paris experiencing the occasional bombardment from enemy aircraft and the giant "Big Bertha" long-distance artillery guns. The city's hedonistic life survived for a while before being subdued by the bloodshed on the front and the impact of rationing and a devastating flu epidemic in 1916. The war was finally ended by the Armistice of 11 November 1918, signed at Compiegne to the northeast of Paris.