Page 21 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Paris

INTRODUCING P ARIS | 19

THE HISTORY

OF PARIS

The Paris conquered by the Romans in years of the new century, revolutionary
52 BC was a small flood-prone fishing fervour had faded and the brilliant
village on the Ile de la Cité, inhabited by militarist Napoleon Bonaparte
the Parisii tribe. A Roman settle ment soon proclaimed himself Emperor of France
flourished and spread onto the Left Bank and pursued his ambition to make
of the Seine. The Franks succeeded the Paris the centre of the world.
Romans, named the city Paris and made Soon after the Revolution of 1848, a
it the centre of their kingdom. radical transforma tion of the city began.
During the Middle Ages, the city flourished Baron Haussmann’s grand urban scheme
as a religious centre and architectural replaced Paris’s medieval slums with elegant
masterpieces such as Sainte-Chapelle were avenues and boulevards. By the end of the
erect ed. It also thrived as a centre of century, the city was the driv ing force of
learning, enticing European scholars to its Western culture. This continued well into
great university, the Sorbonne. the 20th century, interrupted only by
Paris emerged during the Renais sance World War I and II and German military
and the Enlightenment as a great centre of occupation. Since then, the city has revived
culture and ideas, and under the rule of and expanded dramatically, as it strives to
Louis XIV, it also became a city of immense be at the heart of a unified Europe.
wealth and power. But rule by the monarch The following pages illustrate Paris’s
gave way to rule by the people in the history by providing snap shots of the
bloody Revolution of 1789. By the early significant periods in the city’s evolution.

A map of Paris (c. 1845)
Allegory of the Republic (1848) by Dominique Louis Papety

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