Paris
Paris (
French:
[paʁi] ( listen)) is the capital and most populous city of
France.
It has an area of 105 square kilometres (41 square miles) and a
population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits.
[3] The city is both a
commune and
department and forms the centre and headquarters of the
Île-de-France,
or Paris Region, which has an area of 12,012 square kilometres (4,638
square miles) and a population in 2016 of 12,142,802, comprising roughly
18 percent of the population of France.
[4]
By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europe's major centres of
finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that
position still today. The Paris Region had a
GDP
of €624 billion (US $687 billion) in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent
of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in
Europe.
The City of Paris is but the core of a built-up area that extends
well beyond its administrative limits. Commonly referred to as the
agglomération Parisienne, and statistically as a
unité urbaine (a measure of
urban area), the agglomeration has a 2013 population of 10,601,122, which makes it the
largest in the European Union.
[5] City-influenced commuter activity reaches well beyond even this in a statistical
aire urbaine de Paris (a measure of
metropolitan area), that had a 2013 population of 12,405,426,
[6]a number one-fifth the population of France,
[7] and one that makes it, after
London, the
second largest metropolitan area in the
European Union.
Although joined in a single urban tissue, Paris' lack of administrative
and economic cohesion with its suburbs has been a longstanding problem,
but a 2016 'Metropole of
Grand Paris' economic and environmental initiative
[8] covering an 814 square kilometres (314 square miles) area and a population of 7 million, exists since 2016.
[9]
The city is also a major rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports:
Paris-Charles de Gaulle (the second busiest airport in Europe after London Heathrow Airport with 63.8 million passengers in 2014) and
Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the
Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily.
[10] It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Notably,
Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of
Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015.
[11]