Paris: The City of Lights
Paris is known as the “the City of Lights” The reason being is that Paris was one of the first cities in Europe to have electricity and public lighting.
The oldest traces of human occupation in Paris, discovered in 2008 near the Rue Henri-Farman in the 15th arrondissement, are human bones and evidence of an encampment of hunter-gatherers dating from about 8000 BC, Between 250 and 225 BC, the Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, settled at Nanterre on the banks of the Seine, built bridges and a fort, minted coins, and began to trade with other river settlements in Europe
Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe’s major centers of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts and today has an official 2018 population of 12,246,234 or 18.2 percent of the population of France.
During the Middle Ages, Paris was the largest city in Europe, an important religious and commercial centre, and the birthplace of the Gothic style of architecture. The University of Paris on the Left Bank, organised in the mid-13th century, was one of the first in Europe. It suffered from the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century and the Hundred Years War in the 15th century, with recurrence of the plague In the 16th century, Paris became the book-publishing capital of Europe, though it was shaken by the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. In the 18th century, Paris was the centre of the intellectual ferment known as the Enlightenment, and the main stage of the French Revolution from 1789, which is remembered every year on the 14th of July with a military parade.
