Welcome to Forbes & Nash Travel Guide for Paris, France. Whether you are planning a vacation to Paris in the near future and are looking for information on Paris hotel options, or are just interested in the all the glamour and excitement that Paris has to offer, here you will find an comprehensive source of information on all things relating to Paris travel. Whether it be something as basic a map of Paris or the current Paris weather conditions, a description of Paris restaurant options, the history of Paris, information on Paris attractions such as the Eiffel Tower or Louvre, shopping in Paris, or basic information on getting around Paris, you will find it here.

As time goes on we will continue to add more information on Paris travel, so if you don't see what you're looking for now, there's a good chance you'll find it here in the near future.

The Paris hotels listed on the following pages have been selected as some of the better hotels in their category.
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Welcome to Paris

"Paris is well worth a mass", said Henri IV, perhaps France's greatest king, on converting to Catholicism in 1593. Then as now it would have been hard to disagree. Paris was the political heart of France, and since then has more often than not been the political as well as the geographical heart of Europe.

Known as the City of Light, Paris is considered by many travelers as the world's most beautiful city. Its monuments and treasures are better preserved than those of any rival city. But Paris is much more than that. Paris is an International city that controls the larger part of France's economy, an economy second only to Germany's in Europe, and one that reaches far beyond Europe.

The French capital for over a thousand years, Paris was central to the establishment of the modern French state, which developed out of the initial domain of the Capetian lings (roughly Paris to Orléans)over some six centuries. Paris is the governmental, economic, and cultural axis around which French society has revolved, a trend that has grown since the French Revolution. This historic trend has been diluted by recent economic decentralization measures. Whatever their success, France remains the creation of a capital of which it has often been a mere extension - in other words, as the saying goes, when Paris sneezes, France catches cold.

The Paris Region and Its Economy

Paris is blessed with great natural assets: Straddling the middle reaches of the Seine, the city lies at the center of Europe's greatest sedimentary basin (the Bassin Parisien). The basin's agricultural resources, which exploit the rich alluvial soils of its plains and low plateaus, have traditionally been the backbone of the French economy. The Paris region dominates a wide area extending from Normandy in the west, around Picardy and Champagne to the north and east, and through the Beauce country of Chartres between the Seine and the Loire to the south. Within this broad geographic area, today's Région d'Île-de-France (one of 22 French metropolitain regions) covers a little over 4,500 square miles (12,000 sq km), forming a threefold concentric ring of eight départements around Paris, which, since 1976, has resumed its status of commune (one of some 36,000 in France) with its own mayor.

One of the great victories of Paris has been to contain the city proper within the Périphérique ring road, keeping the city a manageable size. With a clean, extensive, efficient, and constantly modernized transport system, this means that few journeys across town take more than 40 minutes.

With some 11 million inhabitants (just under a fifth of the French total) concentrated onto little more than 2 percent of the territory of France, the Île-de-France region is not only a national economic powerhouse, it is also a fully international metropolis, one of the dozen most important in the world. Its demographic impact on the greater Paris basin has therefore been tremendous: Within a radius of some 150 miles (250 km) around Paris, the population of such ancient cities as Reims, Dijon, and Orléans has stagnated at between 200,000 and 250,000 inhabitants.

The Île-de-France's gross domestic product is now over 250 billion dollars (nearly 30 percent of the French total), generating over 50 billion dollars worth of imports against 32 billion dollars in exports. Agriculture, accounting for 60 percent of the region's land use but employing only one percent of its workforce, remains intensive and competitive, while the automobile industry and the electrical, electronics, and computing sectors are driving forces in the national economy. Indeed, no fewer than 65 percent of French companies have their head office in the Île-de-France, clearly marking it as France's dominant region, economically as well as politically.

 

Champs Elysee Paris

Parisian Population

The population of Paris began to stabilize during the 1920s, at about 2.5 million inhabitants, while the suburbs began their rapid expansion from just over 2 million people to more than 7 million today. The "Franciliens," as the inhabitants of the Paris region are now called, are a reflection of Paris's leading role in the profound transformation of French society over the last two centuries, and the strains and stresses this has produced. Paris is a microcosm, reflecting the nation's political tensions. Immigration has also influenced the city's demographics. From th mid-1950s to the 1970s, labor shortages led to massive recruitment campaigns in North Africa and poorer European countries like southern Italy, Spain and Greece. Today, the Paris upper and middle classes are more likely to reside in the western urban area, while the immigrant working classes live in the east.

Paris is also divided into 20 districts called arrondissements, which spiral out in circles from the center (Châtelet) like a snail shell. Parisians tend to identify strongly with their own "quartier" (neighborhood), whether it be the stodgier 16th arrondissement or one of the lively multiethnic areas of Belleville, Chinatown, or Ménilmontant to the east.

Industrial decentralization - clearing industries out of the city to concentrate on Paris's role as a leading European business center - has taken hold. Construction has shifted from residential to office building, bringing a dramatic rise in housing costs. This has driven a large number of less well-off Parisians into the suburbs (as well as young families looking for more space for less money), whose population has more than doubled since the 1960s. The working-class suburbs of Paris, hardest hit by recession, unemployment, and immigration, present one of the great social challenges for this century.

A Parisian L'Accordionisté

Parisian Life

In the last decade of the 20th century, Parisian life has reflected the uncertainties of European integration and the global economy. The monumental grands travaux so characteristic of French presidents from Pompidou to Mitterrand have wound down. Some of the projects - such as the bold plans for a whole new district around the four huge towers of the François Mitterrand Library near the Gare d'Austerlitz - have been scaled down. The emphasis is on restoration, on removing garish neon, and on installing Third Republic-style street accessories. Promised bicycle tracks have appeared, with their own handlebar-level traffic lights to remind cyclists - who are as anarchic as all other Parisian road users - that they too must respect some rules. At the same time, the grands travaux have aged embarrassingly quickly, revealing to much corner-cutting. Funds are now being redirected toward the economic and social rehabilitation of deprived areas. Insecurity has increased - as in many large cities of the developed world and despite an overall drop in the crime rate - as a result in a rise in acts of random violence and vandalism, often committed by teenagers too young to be prosecuted, many of whom also live in recession hit areas.

At the dawn of the third millenium, Paris is still looking for its socioeconomic equilibrium. Great hopes are placed in the technopole sud, extending from La Défense to Orly, as a European center for business. Serious attemps have also been made to counter industrial decline in the east by developing international transport and logistical facilities from Roissy to Marne-la-Vallée, the latter also home to the vast Disneyland Paris theme park.

Disneyland Resort Paris

Two thousand years of Parisian history have demonstrated the aptness of the city's motto, "Fluctuat nec mergitur - Battered by the waves but not sunk." Paris has repeatedly shown its capacity to bounce back from such crises as its destruction during the barbarian raids of the third century, its sufferings during the wars and pestilence of the 14th and 15th centuries, its civil strife during the religious wars of the 16th century, its ordeal during the Prussian siege and the days of the commune (1870-71), and its occupation during World War II. And whatever challenges await in the future, Paris will undoubtedly remain an architectural showcase proudly projecting France's image to the world.