Paris is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in the north of the country, at the heart of the Île-de-France region. Within its administrative limits (the 20 arrondissements), Paris has a population of about 2,230,000, and its metropolitan area is one of the largest population centres in Europe, with more than 12 million inhabitants.

An important settlement for more than two millennia, Paris had become, by the 12th century, one of Europe's foremost centres of learning and the arts and was the largest city in the Western world until the turn of the 18th century. Paris is today one of the world's leading business and cultural centres and its influences in politics, education, entertainment, media, science, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities.

Paris' sights include monuments and architecture, such as its Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower and neo-classic Haussmannian boulevards and buildings as well as museums, operas and concert halls. There are also more modern attractions such as its suburban Disneyland Paris.

Three of the most famous Parisian landmarks are the 12th-century cathedral Notre Dame de Paris on the Île de la Cité, the Napoleonic Arc de Triomphe and the 19th-century Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was a "temporary" construction by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 Universal Exposition, but the tower was never dismantled and is now an enduring symbol of Paris. The Axe historique (Historical axis) is a line of monuments, buildings, and thoroughfares that run in a roughly straight line from the city-centre westwards.

The line of monuments begins with the Louvre and continues through the Tuileries Gardens, the Champs-Élysées, and the Arc de Triomphe, centred in the Place de l'Étoile circus. From the 1960s, the line was prolonged even farther west to the La Défense business district dominated by a square-shaped triumphal Grande Arche of its own; this district hosts most of the tallest skyscrapers in the Paris urban area. The Invalides museum is the burial place for many great French soldiers, including Napoléon; and the Panthéon church is where many of France's illustrious men and women are buried.

The former Conciergerie prison held some prominent Ancien Régime members before their deaths during the French Revolution. Another symbol of the Revolution are the two Statues of Libertylocated on the Île aux Cygnes on the Seine and in the Luxembourg Garden. A larger version of the statues was sent as a gift from France to America in 1886 and now stands in New York City's harbour.

The Palais Garnier, built in the later Second Empire period, houses the Paris Opéra and the Paris Opera Ballet, while the former palace of the Louvre now houses one of the most renowned museums in the world. The Sorbonne is the most famous part of the University of Paris and is based in the centre of the Latin Quarter. Apart from Notre Dame de Paris, there are several other ecclesiastical masterpieces, including the Gothic 13th-century Sainte-Chapelle palace chapel and the Église de la Madeleine.
 

The earliest archaeological signs of permanent settlements in the Paris area date from around 4500–4200 BC, with some of the oldest evidence of canoe-use by hunter-gatherer peoples being uncovered in Bercy in 1991. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the area near the river Seine from around 250 BC, building a trading settlement on the island, later the Île de la Cité, the easiest place to cross. The Romans conquered the Paris basin around 52 BC, with a permanent settlement by the end of the same century on the Left BankSainte Geneviève Hill and the Île de la Cité. The Gallo-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisorum but later Gallicised to Lutèce. After a period of decline and by AD 400, Lutèce, largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little more than a garrison town entrenched into a hastily fortified central island. The city reclaimed its original appellation of "Paris" towards the end of the Roman occupation, around 360 AD.

Paris became prosperous and by the end of the 11th century, scholars, teachers and monks flocked to the city to engage in intellectual exchanges, to teach and be taught; Philippe-Auguste founded the University of Paris in 1200. The guilds gradually became more powerful and were instrumental in inciting the first revolt after the king was captured by the English in 1356. Paris' population was around 200,000 when the Black Death arrived in 1348, killing as many as 800 people a day; and 40,000 died from the plague in 1466. During the 16th and 17th centuries, plague visited the city for almost one year out of three. Paris lost its position as seat of the French realm during the occupation by the English-allied Burgundians during the Hundred Years' War, but when Charles VII of France reclaimed the city from English rule in 1436, Paris became France's capital once again in title, although the real centre of power would remain in the Loire Valley until King Francis I returned France's crown residences to Paris in 1528.

In 1590 Henri IV unsuccessfully laid siege to the city in the Siege of Paris, but, threatened with usurption from Philip II of Spain, he converted to Catholicism in 1594, and the city welcomed him as king. The Bourbons, Henri's family, spend vast amounts of money keeping the city under control, building the Ile St-Louis as well as bridges and other infrastructure. The 17th century was the "Age of Enlightenment" – Paris' reputation grew on the writings of its intellectuals such as the philosopher Voltaire, and Diderot, the first volume of his “Encyclopédie” being published in Paris in 1751.

At the end of the century, Paris was the centre stage for the French Revolution; a bad harvest in 1788 caused food prices to rocket and by the following year the sovereign debt had reached unprecedented levels. On 14 July 1789 Parisians, appalled by the King’s pressure on the new assembly formed by the Third Estate, took siege of the Bastille fortress. The Republic was declared for the first time in 1792. Following the Terror, the French Directory held control until it was overthrown in a coup d'état by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon put an end to the Revolution and established French Consulate, and then later was elected by plebscite as emperor of the First French Empire.

The greatest development in Paris' history began with the Industrial Revolution creation of a network of railways that brought an unprecedented flow of migrants to the capital from the 1840s.