12 Facts About France Paris

1. University of France Paris, founded in the 12th century, is often called the Sorbonne after one of its original medieval colleges.

2. Django Reinhardt rose to fame in France Paris, having moved to the 18th arrondissement in a caravan as a young boy, and performed with violinist Stephane Grappelli and their Quintette du Hot Club de France in the 1930s and 1940s.

3. In 1911, the dance hall Olympia France Paris invented the grand staircase as a settling for its shows, competing with its great rival, the Folies Bergere.

4. The Golden Age of the School of France Paris ended between the two world wars.

5. In 2017 Greater France Paris had 2,020 hotels, including 85 five-star hotels, with a total of 119,000 rooms.

6. Majority of France Paris's salaried employees fill 370,000 businesses services jobs, concentrated in the north-western 8th, 16th and 17th arrondissements.

7. The first modern elected mayor of France Paris was Jacques Chirac, elected 20 March 1977, becoming the city's first mayor since 1793.

8. The population of France Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs.

9. The first railway line to France Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city.

10. Population of France Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but between 1799 and 1815, it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000.

11. Under the rule of the Capetian kings, France Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France.

12. City of France Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Ile-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2018 population of 12,246,234, or 18.2 percent of the population of France.