14 Paris City of Light

CHAPTER 1 The City of Light PEOPLE FROM EVERY COUNTRY COME TO SEE THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY. Paris— the City of Light. But why is it called that? One answer is that Paris was one of the first cities in Europe to have streetlights (in 1828). But another answer is that 300 years ago many great philosophers lived in Paris. Their ideas brought light to people's thinking and changed the world. Paris is the world's favorite city for tourists. About 42 million people visit every year! There are beautiful hotels and great restaurants— French cooking is also famous. And there's so much to see: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, Notre Dame! About 12 million people live in the Paris region, but only 2.2 million live inside the old city walls. One hundred years ago, there were many factories and workers' homes in Paris. But now, homes are very expensive in the city. In the cheapest part of Paris, you can pay $300,000 for only two rooms! Paris is also a very important place for business. A quarter of all the money in France comes from the Paris region. Many world businesses have buildings in Paris, too.

CHAPTER 2 History THE HISTORY OF PARIS IS LONG AND VERY INTERESTING. Paris is a very old city with a long, exciting history. There were villages in the region 6,000 years ago. Then the Romans came 2,000 years ago. They built a town called Lutetia Parisiorum. In 1348, there were 200,000 Parisians. That was a lot. Only 50,000 people lived in London then. For centuries, there were many wars in France. Most people were poor and hungry. In the 17th century, the poor people of Paris got angry. They started fighting the king, Louis XIV. In 1648, the king took his family and all the most important people in France to Versailles, 20 kilometers from Paris. There, they lived in a very big palace. They felt safe from the poor people. Louis XIV was king for 72 years! In that time Paris got smaller and less important, and Versailles got bigger and more expensive. In the end, Louis's palace took about 30 percent of all the money in France! The poor people of France got very angry.

The 17th and 18th centuries were the time of the Enlightenment. Great philosophers and writers in Paris wanted change. They wanted a better world that was good for everybody, not only the king and his friends. On July 14, 1789, angry people stormed an important building, the Bastille, in Paris. This was the beginning of the French Revolution. At first, the people tried to talk with the king, Louis XVI, but he didn't listen. So, in January 1793, the French guillotined him in Paris. A few months later, his wife, Marie Antoinette, also died on the guillotine. Now there are no kings in Versailles, and Paris is the capital of the Republic of France. In 1940, Nazi soldiers came to Paris. It was a very bad time. There wasn't much food, and people weren't safe. Then in 1944, the Allies— French, American, British, and other soldiers— fought the Nazis for Paris. Dietrich von Choltitz was the most important German soldier in Paris. Hitler told him to blow up the city before the Allies got there. But he didn't. He said it was too beautiful. So Paris still has its beautiful buildings today. The history of Paris is very interesting. Why not learn more about it?

CHAPTER 3 Architecture WHY IS PARIS SO BEAUTIFUL? Paris has a special look. The architecture is the same in many places in the city. About 150 years ago, most streets and buildings in Paris were very old. The streets weren't very clean. And they were very narrow. It was difficult for many people to walk through them at one time. So the last French king, Napoleon III, asked a man named Georges-Eugene Haussmann to build a new Paris. Haussmann made wide streets and built beautiful new stone buildings, all with the same architecture. That's why Paris is so beautiful! Today, thanks to Haussmann, Paris has many wide streets, called avenues and boulevards. There are also a lot of beautiful parks, museums, churches like Notre Dame, and old bridges like the Pont Neuf. The famous Champs-Élysées Avenue is beautiful. It has many stores and some very expensive restaurants and cafes! On July 14 each year, many people go there to watch French soldiers and planes going down the avenue from the Arc de Triomphe to the Tuileries gardens.

The most famous building in Paris isn't really a building at all. It's the Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel built his famous tower in 1889, 100 years after the Revolution. It is very tall: 324 meters. Tourists love to go up the tower and see Paris from above. The Eiffel Tower is unusual because most buildings in Paris aren't very tall. In 1973, work ended on the Montparnasse Tower. It was a new kind of building, 210 meters tall. Most Parisians didn't like it. So new buildings in Paris can't be so tall now. Paris has some interesting new buildings, too. In the 1970s, the French government built an exciting new building the Pompidou Center. Inside are a museum of modern art, a big library, and a place for studying music. Millions of people visit it. Another beautiful new building is the Bastille Opera. Paris now has two opera houses— an old one and a new one. Some of the world's best singers come to sing in Paris. Beautiful music for a beautiful city!

CHAPTER 4 Culture PARIS IS A CITY OF CULTURE, WITH ART, ARCHITECTURE, MOVIES, AND FASHION. Paris is a very important place for culture. It has a long history of art and artists. Its museums show work by great French artists like Renoir, Rodin, and Czanne— and other painters who came to live in Paris, like Van Gogh, Picasso, and Dali. A lot of writers also came from other countries to live in Paris. For example, in the 1920s, the American writers Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Paris. Artists and writers often met in cafés like Les Deux Magots to talk about their ideas. You can visit the cafe today, too, but now it's very expensive! France makes a lot of movies. A Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, "the father of film," made the world's first movie in 1888. You can see Paris in many movies, too, for example Amélie, The Bourne Identity, and The Da Vinci Code. A great movie for seeing the city is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. It shows Paris today and in the past. An American man from today goes back in time at midnight and meets all of the famous artists, writers, fashion designers, and beautiful people in Paris in the 1920s.