Blitz history of Paris.

picture by: Pierre Puvis de Chevannes, 1881

From small fishing village to famous town of fashion.

Paris is more than 2,000 years old. Gauls of the Parisii tribe settled there between 250 and 200 BC and founded a fishing village on an island in the river that is the present-day Ile de la Cité -- the center around which Paris developed.

Around AD 500, Paris was the capital of the Frankish king Clovis I, who commissioned the first chatedral and its first abbey dedicated to hic contemporary, later patron saint of the city, Sainte Geneviève.

The Industial Revolution, the Franch Second Empire , and the Belle Époque brought Paris the greatest development in its history. From the 1840s, rail transport allowed an unprecedented flow of migrants into Paris attracted by employment in the new industries in the suburbs

During Wprld War I, Paris was at the forefront of the war effort, having been spared a German invasion by the French and British victory at the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. In 1918-1919, it was the scene of Allied victory parades and peace negotiations. In the inter-war-period Paris was famed for its cultural and artistic communities and its nightlife. The city became a gathering place of artists from around the world, from exiled Russian composer Stravinsky and Spanish painter Picasso to American writer Hemingway.