Paris

It is the capital of France and the region of Ile de France. Formed in the only unidepartamental commune of the country, is situated on both banks of a long meander of the River Seine in the center of the Paris Basin, between the confluence of the River Marne and Seine upstream, and the Oise and the Seine, downstream.

The city of Paris, within its administrative limits narrow, has a population of 2,273,305 inhabitants (2015) .2 The Parisian population increased from 2,125,851 inhabitants since 1999. The most populous district of the city is the fifteenth with 236,715 inhabitants, the least populous is the first quarter with 17,308 inhabitants.

However, in the twentieth century, metropolitan Paris has expanded beyond the city limits of Paris, and is today the second largest metropolitan area of ​​the European continent (after London) with a population of 12,292,895 inhabitants (2011).

The Paris region (Ile de France) is with London, one of the most important economic centers of Europe.6 With 607 billion euros (845 billion dollars), produced more than a quarter of the gross domestic product ( GDP) of France in 2011.7 La Défense is the main business district of Europe, 8 houses the headquarters of almost half of large French companies, as well as the headquarters of twenty of the 100 largest in the world.

The city is the most popular tourist destination in the world, with more than 42 million foreign visitors per year.9 features many of the most famous and admired monuments of the world: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Avenue Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, the Sacré Cœur, former Hospital of Les Invalides, the Pantheon, the Arch of Defense, the Opera Garnier or the Montmartre district, among others. Also home to world-renowned institutions: the Louvre, the Orsay Museum and the National Museum of Natural History of France, as well as an extensive system of higher education of international prestige.

Culture

Since a bouquiniste (selling second-hand books).
Paris has been an important cultural and artistic center in Western history. In it they were born, formed or developed their careers French figures like René Descartes, Molière, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, son, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet among others. Since the early nineteenth century until the late 1960s, Paris was the world center of arte.38 This period received its brightness emblematic representatives of French art as Braque, Duchamp and Matisse and several foreign artists like Beckett, Brancusi, Brecht , Buñuel, Hemingway, Joyce, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Picasso and Stravinski.38 at this time there was a gradual shift of the creative centers in different districts of the city: from Montmartre, home of cubism, to Montparnasse, the scene of bohemian interwar and surrealism, to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, center of the existentialist movement associated with Jean-Paul Sartre, and finally the Latin Quarter, scene of the May francés.38 these nuclei retain their prominence in the cultural life of the city .

Many authors who have developed their stories taking to the French capital as a backdrop. Such is the case of Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller, Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortazar and Paris was a party (1964) by Ernest Hemingway. In addition, the city has the highest content of artworks, distributed in many museums and private collections.