PARIS CIVITAS

Paris has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the CITY OR CIVITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the entire history of european integration and the future of Europe.

Paris is one of the most ancient cities of the history of European integration, signed in great part by Christianity. It was founded in III century B.C. by the Celts Senones tribe as a trading point village on the Seine river but was conquered in 52 B.C. by Julius Caesar legions and became a Colonia of the Roman Res Public inhabited by Romans veterans and aristocratic families, named Lutetia Parisiorum and provided with a forum, baths, temples, theatres and an amphitheatre. Then the Civitas Paris had been connected through the Aquitania way starting in Cologne and passing through the civitas of Reims, Tours, Bordeaux and Narbonne to end in Toulouse. Within the reform of Augustus (see Roman Empire), Paris was included in the Gallia Lugdunensis province and became an important Christian community when the first bishop Saint Denis was buried after martyrium in the place today called "Montmartre", where has been built the homonimus Basilica and are buried lots of French kings. With the reform of Constantine I (see Christian Empire) Paris became part of the Gallia Dicoesi and led the evangelization of Gallia Belgica and Aquitania.

At the falling of Western Roman Empire, Paris became in 508 A.D. capital of the Franks Regna allied to the Catholics Church against the Arianism eresy with the first anointed king Clovis I of Merovingian dinasty. Since then, the city gradually became the largest and most prosperous city of France, always its capital built around the nucleus fortified of Île de la Cité and never conquered until today! In 1163 A.D. Maurice de Sully bishop of Paris undertook the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral at the eastern side of the isle, connected with the cultural centre from XII century A.D. moved to the Right Bank of the Seine, where grew up Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, alias the headquarters of trading corporations, that later became the Paris's first municipal government. Some times after, king Philip II Augustus of Capetingian dinasty extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions, giving the city its first walls, then rebuilt its bridges on the central island and paved its thoroughfares. In 1190 A.D., he transformed Paris's former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that would become the University of Paris "La Sorbonne" and would draw teachers and students from all of Europe.

As capital of the French Kingdom, Paris became the most populated and powerful city of Europe, occupied for twenty years by English troups when were crowned kings of the Plantagenet dinasty, and the leader of the Catholic League during the war of religions that brought the Borbone dinasty on the throne in late 16th-century A.D.: the new king Henry IV, famous for the expression "Paris is worth a mass" once crowned, completed the construction of Paris's first sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, connected the Louvre to the Tuileries Palace and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale (now Place des Vosges). In XVII century A.D., Cardinal Richelieu chief minister of King Louis XIII, commissioned a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne and the Palais-Royal, while the royal court moved to Versailles arts and sciences flourished in the city with the Comédie-Française, the Academy of Painting, and the French Academy of Sciences, the city walls were demolished and replaced with the Grands Boulevards, Place Vendôme, Place des Victoires and Place des Les Invalides. In 1780 A.D a new boulevard named the Champs-Élysées extended the city west to Étoile, while the eastern side of the city grew increasingly crowded with poor migrant workers from others regions of France: when Paris became the centre of philosophic and scientific activity, starting the "Age of Enlightenment", the combination of the two events made the city the centre stage of the French Revolution of 1789 A.D..

During the Napoleon I epoch, Paris obtained new buildings such as l'Arc de Triomphe, le Canal de l'Ourcq, the Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city's first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts. After "Restauration" at the Wien Congress of 1815 A.D., Paris was provided of the first railway line and beginned a new period of massive migration from provinces, so that the new French emperor Napoloen III launched huge public works project to build wide new boulevards, the new Opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. With the 1889 A.D. Universal Exposition, Paris received the made of steel Tour Eiffel and at the beginning of XX century A.D. became the European centre for artists and movements meeting in Montmartre point. Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, and gastronomy in Europe and the whole world, with a clear leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its early and extensive system of street lighting that made Paris known as "Ville Lumière".

Today Paris is one of the most visited touristic site in the world (esay to reach by airplanes and the raylroads network including the Eurostar tunnel under the Channel) thanks to the several museum and its historic centre enlisted in the UNESCO World Heritage, for Disneyland park and the Versailles castle and gardens. Even more the city is the seat of many international organization as UNESCO, OECD, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Energy Agency, the International Federation for Human Rights, the European Space Agency, European Banking Authority and European Securities and Markets Authority. Nowadays, Paris is the biggest city and capital of France, within the Île-de-France region, whose patron is Saint Genevieve a consacrated virgin who saved the city from the Huns attack just with her prayers. Why the name Paris? Some scholars affirm it was the name of the ancient Celts tribe occupying the site in the Bronze Age but someone else consider it the reference to the mythic troyan prince who kidnapped Helen queen of Sparta and killed the greek hero Achilles: he probably came and founded Paris, the place where the most famous warrior and the most beautyful lady of the history of european integration lived in peace in the Champs-Élysées...

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