Paris Travel Guide - FLASH

Beyond central Paris, the outlying suburbs are called Les Banlieues . Schematically, those on the west of Paris (Neuilly-sur-Seine, Boulogne- Billancourt, Saint Cloud, Levallois) are wealthy residential communities. Those to the northeast are poorer communities, often populated by immigrants.

occupied by the Cathédrale Notre- Dame . It takes its present name from the name of the dominant Gallo-Celtic tribe in the region, the Parisii . At least that's what the Romans called them, when they showed up in 52 BCE and established their city Lutetia on the left bank of the Seine, in what is now called the "Latin Quarter" in the 5th arrondissement. The Romans held out here for as long as anywhere else in the Western Empire, but by 508 CE they were gone, replaced by Clovis of the Franks , who is considered by the French to have been their first king. Clovis' descendants, aka the Carolingians, held onto the expanded Lutetian state for nearly 500 years

Understand

The 105 km² area of the central city is densely packed with more than 2 million inhabitants and parking is tough.

History

Paris started life as the Celto-Roman settlement of Lutetia on the Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine currently