99 Fun Facts About Paris

Paris's biggest airport, at Roissy, is named after which French leader?

Charles de Gaulle never saw it: he died in 1970, four years before the airport that bears his name opened.

In what pattern are Paris's 20 arrondissements numbered?

A spiral from the centre starts with the 1st arrondissement, home to the official buildings, and each number ends that district's postcode, 75001 to 75020.

Paris's nickname 'City of Light' is partly a nod to its role in which era?

The Age of Enlightenment is one reason given, though some credit the street lanterns Paris's first police chief put up from 1667.

What was the Roman name for the town that became Paris?

Lutetia was home to the Parisii, a Gallic tribe, and it is from them that the city later took the name Paris.

Which Frankish king, baptised at Reims, made Paris his capital from 508?

Clovis united the Franks under one king, yet after his death his four sons split his kingdom between them.

The Eiffel Tower was built for celebrations marking the centenary of what?

The French Revolution's centenary gave Paris a tower that leading artists publicly condemned as useless and monstrous, yet it became the city's symbol.

Which New York skyscraper ended the Eiffel Tower's 41-year reign as the world's tallest structure?

The Chrysler Building's spire was secretly assembled inside the tower and hoisted into place in about 90 minutes to beat a rival skyscraper.

What saved the Eiffel Tower when its 20-year permit ran out in 1909?

Its value for radio telegraphy made it too useful to pull down, and from 1910 it beamed time signals that ships used to fix their position.

Tailor Franz Reichelt died jumping from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 while testing what?

A parachute suit was only meant to be tested on a dummy, but Reichelt jumped himself, and his fall was caught on film.

When the Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793, where had most of its paintings come from?

The monarchy and the Church supplied most of it; Napoleon's armies later filled the museum with loot, but after his fall many works went back to their owners.

Which French king converted the medieval Louvre fortress into the primary royal residence in 1546?

Francis I rebuilt the fortress as a Renaissance palace, but once Louis XIV chose Versailles, the Louvre was left to house the royal art collection.

Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?

Vincenzo Peruggia kept the painting hidden in his Paris room for two years, and the publicity around the theft turned it into a world-famous icon.

What does the bronze medallion set in the square in front of Notre-Dame mark?

Point zero for road distances lies on a square where digs for a planned underground car park in the 1960s uncovered ruins that are now kept in a crypt below.

Notre-Dame stands on which island in the Seine?

Île de la Cité was the kings' seat until the 14th century, and its old palace prison, the Conciergerie, later held Marie Antoinette before her execution.

What is the name of the bell-ringer in the 1831 novel that stirred support for restoring Notre-Dame?

Quasimodo's story drew such public interest that the neglected cathedral was restored under architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

Which relic, rescued from Notre-Dame's 2019 fire, returned to the cathedral days after its December 2024 reopening?

The Crown of Thorns was carried to safety by Paris firefighters, among them their chaplain, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, who went into the burning cathedral.

Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe in 1806 after which victory?

Austerlitz inspired the arch, but it took three decades to build and was only finished in 1836, long after Napoleon's fall.

In August 1919 pilot Charles Godefroy did what at the Arc de Triomphe?

Flew a biplane through it: Charles Godefroy did it in protest after airmen were ordered to march on foot in the victory parade.

What was the old name of the square where twelve avenues meet around the Arc de Triomphe?

Place de l'Étoile, 'Star Square', took its name from the twelve avenues that radiate from it like the points of a star.

The first Paris Métro line opened in July 1900 during which event?

The World's Fair was on when Line 1 opened on 19 July 1900, and so were the Olympics, which Paris staged as part of the fair.

Who designed the Paris Métro's famous Art Nouveau station entrances?

Hector Guimard's entrances were mocked at first, and in 1904 the Opéra station turned his design down in favour of a classical one.

Why were millions of Parisians' bones moved into old quarries beneath the city from the 1780s?

Cemeteries were overflowing: Holy Innocents' ground stood two metres above the street and a cellar wall beside it gave way; over six million people now lie below.

To lure Parisians to the new Père Lachaise cemetery, officials moved in the remains of which playwright?

Molière's reburial in 1817, alongside La Fontaine's, did the trick: the cemetery grew from 13 graves in 1804 to over 33,000 by 1830.

Sacré-Cœur was proposed in the aftermath of France's defeat in which war?

Franco-Prussian War defeat inspired the vow to build it, and its hilltop site, where the Commune began, still makes it controversial on the French left.

Sacré-Cœur stays brilliant white because its Château-Landon travertine does what when it rains?

Exudes calcite: rain draws it out of the stone. The First World War then pushed the basilica's consecration, planned for October 1914, back to 1919.

Which Paris cabaret, opened in 1889, is famed as the birthplace of the modern can-can?

The Moulin Rouge won international fame fast, helped by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's posters and paintings of its dancers.

The Panthéon was originally built as a church dedicated to which patron of Paris?

Genevieve's church was barely finished when the National Assembly turned it into a tomb for great men, and Voltaire's remains arrived in July 1791.

Who was the first person entombed in the Panthéon after it was returned to mausoleum use in 1881?

Victor Hugo's state funeral drew more than two million mourners, and he was laid in the Panthéon ten days after his death in May 1885.

Who directed the boulevards, parks and sewers programme that gave Paris its modern look in 1853-70?

Georges-Eugène Haussmann's costs soared, and Jules Ferry mocked them in a pamphlet titled 'Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann'.

The Paris Commune of 1871 governed the city for roughly how long before its bloody suppression?

Two months was long enough for the Commune to pull down the Vendôme Column that Napoleon had raised, before troops crushed it in May 1871.

Which German general surrendered Paris to the Allies on 25 August 1944?

Dietrich von Choltitz later cast himself as the man who defied Hitler's order to leave Paris in ruins, but historians say he lacked the means to destroy it.

Which French general's armoured division led the Allies into Paris in August 1944?

Philippe Leclerc defied his American corps commander and sent a vanguard ahead, which reached the Hôtel de Ville at about 9:22 pm on 24 August.

Which is the oldest bridge still standing across the Seine in Paris?

Pont Neuf means 'New Bridge', a name it earned as the first Paris bridge built without houses lining it.

Which Paris bridge, topped by four gilded statues, stands in line with the Esplanade des Invalides?

Pont Alexandre III was kept low, with a single steel arch, so it would not block the view of the Invalides from the Champs-Élysées.

The Musée d'Orsay, home to the world's largest Impressionist collection, occupies a former what?

Railway station platforms too short for longer trains ended the Gare d'Orsay's mainline service, and the building reopened as the museum in December 1986.

The Centre Pompidou was designed by Renzo Piano and which British architect?

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano put the building's pipes outside, colour-coded blue for air, green for water and yellow for electrics, to free up space inside.

In Greek myth, who rested in the fields that gave the Champs-Élysées its name?

Heroes and the righteous rested there; Homer put the Elysian Fields at the western edge of the earth, but Virgil placed them in the underworld.

From 1975 to 2023 the Champs-Élysées hosted the finish of which annual sporting event?

Tour de France riders missed the avenue in 2024, when preparations for the Paris Olympics forced the race to finish in Nice instead.

Roland Garros, the Paris tennis Grand Slam, is played on which surface?

Clay slows the ball and makes it bounce high, blunting big servers and favouring patient baseliners, which is why Roland Garros is so physically gruelling.

PSG was founded in 1970 by merging Stade Saint-Germain with which club?

Paris FC split away again in 1972 and kept the top-flight place, while PSG had to restart in the third division.

The 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony broke with tradition by doing what?

Holding it on the Seine, outside a stadium, meant a vast security operation, and officials cut the expected crowd from about 600,000 to around 300,000.

Which city was the first to host the Summer Olympics three times, before Paris matched it in 2024?

London's middle Games, in 1948, were the 'Austerity Games': rationing meant no new venues, and athletes slept in barracks and colleges.

'Paris syndrome', culture shock in disappointed visitors, is noted mainly among tourists from which country?

Japan's idealised media image of Paris can clash with the reality of language barriers and crowded streets, a gap psychiatrist Hiroaki Ota described.

Under what name did Disneyland Paris open in 1992?

Euro Disney struggled at first, with prices too high for European visitors and heavy debts, before a financial rescue turned it around.

The 2001 film Amélie, starring Audrey Tautou, is set mainly in which Paris district?

Montmartre's real café where Amélie waits tables drew so many fans that its chairs kept getting stolen.

In Pixar's Paris-set Ratatouille, the rat Remy dreams of cooking in the restaurant of which late chef?

Auguste Gusteau's kitchen grew from research: Brad Bird's crew dined at top Paris restaurants, and chef Thomas Keller let the producer intern in his kitchen.

The croissant descends from the kipferl, which August Zang brought to Paris in the late 1830s from where?

Austria's kipferl was a crescent roll, and French bakers later swapped its brioche-style recipe for flaky laminated pastry, creating the modern croissant.

France's 1993 'Bread Decree' requires that traditional baguettes be what?

Made without pre-made dough, a 'tradition' baguette is shielded from the industrial shortcuts that spread through French bakeries after World War II.

At the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, which Paris vehicles did the army requisition to rush soldiers to the front?

Taxis kept their meters running and the treasury paid the fares, yet historians doubt they changed the battle; their real effect was on morale.

A quarter-scale replica of which American monument stands on the Île aux Cygnes in the Seine in Paris?

The Statue of Liberty copy was unveiled on 4 July 1889 and faces west, in the direction of its far larger original in New York Harbor.

What did Paris workers cut from the Pont des Arts in 2015 because the weight was damaging the footbridge?

Love padlocks, fixed to the railings by couples who then threw the keys into the Seine, had passed a million in number and weighed roughly 45 tons.

Why can publishing night photos of the Eiffel Tower require permission from the tower's operator?

The lighting is copyrighted: a French court ruled in 1990 that a display on the tower was an original visual creation, although the structure itself has been in the public domain since 1993.

Which architect designed the glass pyramid that opened as the main entrance to the Louvre in 1989?

I. M. Pei was chosen in 1983, and his design inspired a stubborn myth that it holds exactly 666 panes of glass, when the Louvre counts 673.

Which American rock star, who died in a Paris apartment in 1971 aged 27, is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery?

Jim Morrison, frontman of The Doors, lay in a grave with no official marker until French officials placed a shield over it, which was stolen in 1973.

Which French inventors held their first paid public film screening at the Grand Café in Paris in 1895?

The Lumière brothers drew around 40 paying visitors and invited guests that night, a screening traditionally regarded as the birth of cinema.

In November 1783, what kind of aircraft carried two men over Paris on the first free human flight?

A hot-air balloon made by the Montgolfier brothers lifted Pilâtre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes from the grounds of the Château de la Muette, on the western edge of Paris.

The 1900 Olympic Games in Paris were the first in which what group of athletes took part?

Women made their Olympic debut in Paris, where sailor Hélène de Pourtalès became the first female Olympic champion as part of a winning yacht crew.

Which unit was first defined as a ten-millionth of the span from the North Pole to the equator via Paris?

The metre was pinned down by French surveyors who measured the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, a task they completed in 1799.

Which ancient Greek statue in the Louvre, unearthed on an Aegean island in 1820, is missing both arms?

Venus de Milo is named after Milos, the island where it was found, and it has been on display in the Louvre since 1821, the year after its discovery.

Which Irish writer's Paris tomb was given a glass barrier in 2011 to stop lipstick kisses?

Oscar Wilde lies beneath a monument carved by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, and the animal fat in admirers' lipstick was sinking into the stone and causing permanent damage.

The Latin Quarter of Paris takes its name from the language once spoken there by which group?

University students and their teachers spoke Latin around the schools in the Middle Ages, after the philosopher Pierre Abélard and his pupils took up residence in the area.

Which Gothic Paris landmark, commissioned by King Louis IX, is famed for its towering walls of stained glass?

Sainte-Chapelle was built to hold the king's collection of Passion relics, and its windows form one of the most extensive sets of 13th-century stained glass anywhere in the world.

Which sculptor's Paris museum, in the Hôtel Biron he once used as a workshop, displays The Thinker?

Auguste Rodin gave his entire collection of sculptures to the French state on the condition that the Hôtel Biron became a museum dedicated to his works.

Which James Joyce novel was first published in 1922 by the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company?

Ulysses came out under the name of Sylvia Beach's English-language shop and lending library, a gathering place for expatriate writers that closed in 1941.

Which American novelist recalled his struggling years in 1920s Paris in the memoir A Moveable Feast?

Ernest Hemingway never saw the book in print: it was published in 1964, three years after his death, by his widow Mary from his manuscripts and notes.

Which Paris opera house, built over a huge water cistern, is the setting of The Phantom of the Opera?

Palais Garnier really does stand above a vast concrete cistern, designed to relieve groundwater pressure on the basement walls and to serve as a reservoir in case of fire.

Which designer opened a hat boutique at 21 rue Cambon in Paris in 1910 before launching a famous perfume?

Coco Chanel began as a licensed milliner, and by 1919 she had set up her couture house a few doors along the same street, at number 31.

Which physicist became, in 1995, the first woman entombed in the Paris Panthéon on her own merits?

Marie Curie was moved there with her husband Pierre; the only woman already inside, Sophie Berthelot, had been admitted so she could lie beside her chemist husband.

Which Paris fortress, long used as a state prison, was stormed by a crowd on 14 July 1789?

The Bastille held just seven prisoners on the day it fell, and the fortress was later demolished and replaced by a public square that keeps its name.

Which Paris square, where King Louis XVI was guillotined, has an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor at its centre?

Place de la Concorde received the obelisk, which is over 3,000 years old, as a gift from Egypt in the 1830s, while its twin remains outside the Luxor Temple.

Which Paris-born singer of La Vie en rose was nicknamed for a sparrow because of her tiny frame?

Édith Piaf stood only 142 centimetres tall, and her discoverer Louis Leplée gave her the stage name La Môme Piaf, Paris slang for 'The Sparrow Kid'.

Which Polish composer died in Paris in 1849, after which his sister carried his heart home to Warsaw?

Frédéric Chopin had asked for the journey himself, and the heart, preserved in alcohol, was later sealed inside a pillar of Warsaw's Holy Cross Church.

Which American-born star of Paris revues wore a skirt of artificial bananas at the Folies Bergère?

Josephine Baker went on to spy for the French Resistance, and in 2021 she became the first Black woman inducted into the Panthéon.

Which Dutch exotic dancer was shot as a German spy at the Château de Vincennes, near Paris, in 1917?

Mata Hari, the stage name of Margaretha Zelle, faced a twelve-man French firing squad in the castle moat just before dawn.

Which helmeted electronic duo, formed in Paris in 1993, took its name from a bad review of an earlier band?

Daft Punk lifted the words from a Melody Maker critic's put-down of Darlin', the indie rock group the pair had played in before turning to dance music.

Which luxury train service made its first run from Paris in 1883 and was later extended to Istanbul?

The Orient Express, created by a Belgian sleeping-car company, went only as far as Vienna on that first trip and kept running in some form until 2009.

Which gruelling off-road race first set off from Paris in 1978, bound for the coast of West Africa?

The Dakar Rally sent 182 vehicles off from Paris on its first running, and only 74 of them survived the 10,000-kilometre trip to the Senegalese capital.

Which palace southwest of Paris housed the French royal court from 1682 and has a famous Hall of Mirrors?

Versailles began as a hunting lodge that Louis XIII built in 1623, and Louis XIV turned it into the seat of his government, about 16 kilometres from the capital.

Whose tomb has lain beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris since 1920, watched over by an eternal flame?

The Unknown Soldier was picked out at Verdun by a 21-year-old private from an infantry regiment, and the flame added in 1923 is rekindled every evening at 6:30.

Into which body of water does the Seine empty at Le Havre after flowing past Paris?

The English Channel receives a river that rises near Dijon, at a spring the city of Paris has owned since 1864.

Which business district, at the western end of the historic axis of Paris, is home to the Grande Arche?

La Défense gained the arch after a 1982 competition to find a monument that would complete the axis, and Jean-Michel Jarre used it as a projection screen for a vast concert in July 1990.

What is the name of the ring road, completed in 1973, that encircles the city of Paris?

Boulevard Périphérique, known to drivers as the Périph, was built more like a motorway than a boulevard to ease congestion and was finished under President Pompidou.

Which Paris rail terminus, described as the busiest in Europe, is the departure point for Eurostar trains?

Gare du Nord got its present building in the 1860s, designed by the architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff for the Chemin de Fer du Nord company.

What did Léon Foucault demonstrate in 1851 with a giant pendulum hung from the Paris Panthéon's dome?

Earth's rotation makes the plane of the swing appear to turn slowly over the day, and an exact copy of the pendulum has hung under the dome since 1995.

France set its clocks by the Paris meridian until 1911, when it adopted the time of which rival?

Greenwich had been chosen as the world's prime meridian at a conference in Washington in 1884, yet France kept Paris time for another 27 years.

Which American inventor helped negotiate the 1783 Treaty of Paris alongside John Adams and John Jay?

Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues signed with a representative of King George III, formally ending the War of American Independence.

Which American pilot landed at Le Bourget near Paris in 1927 after flying alone and nonstop from New York?

Charles Lindbergh spent more than 33 hours in the air, and word that he had been spotted over England drew a crowd to the airfield before he arrived.

Which central Paris food market did Émile Zola call the belly of the city before it moved out to Rungis?

Les Halles gave Zola the setting for his 1873 novel Le Ventre de Paris, and the old market halls were pulled down in the early 1970s, about a century after the book appeared.

The wheel-shaped Paris–Brest pastry was created in 1910 to celebrate what kind of event?

A bicycle race, the 1,200 km Paris–Brest–Paris ride, inspired pastry chef Louis Durand, and the rich ring became popular with riders for its calories.

Which nickname do Parisians give the Eiffel Tower, a nod to the metal it was built from in 1889?

The Iron Lady, or La dame de fer, is made of wrought iron and wears three shades of paint, lighter at the top and darker towards the ground, to complement the Paris sky.

Which 1970 Disney film follows the cat Duchess and her three kittens on a journey back to Paris in 1910?

The Aristocats names the kittens Berlioz, Marie and Toulouse, and their trouble begins with a butler who wants their owner's fortune for himself.

The dark green Wallace fountains were given to Paris after the 1870–71 siege to offer residents free what?

Drinking water had soared in price because many aqueducts were destroyed, so the English philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace, who had stayed in his Paris villa during the siege, paid for the fountains.

Which 1973 Paris skyscraper led to a ban on tall buildings in the city centre two years later?

Tour Montparnasse remained the tallest skyscraper in France until 2011, and the urban climber Alain Robert has scaled its glass wall with no safety equipment.

Roland Garros, whose name the French Open's Paris venue carries, won fame in 1913 in which field?

Aviation made Garros internationally famous when he completed the first non-stop crossing of the Mediterranean by air, from southern France to Tunisia.

What appears on the coat of arms of Paris, the old emblem of a powerful guild of Seine river merchants?

A sailing ship rides the waves on the shield, matched by the Latin city motto Fluctuat nec mergitur, which says she is tossed by the waves but does not sink.

Since 1956 Paris has been exclusively twinned with which other European capital, its only official twin city?

Rome and Paris built the pact on the idea that each city is the only one worthy of the other, so neither takes a second twin.

Which Italian-born queen, widow of King Henry IV, began the Luxembourg Garden in Paris in 1612?

Marie de' Medici wanted a palace modelled on the Pitti Palace of her native Florence, and she had 2,000 elm trees planted for the park around it.

Which architect restored Notre-Dame in the 19th century and designed the spire lost in the 2019 fire?

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc replaced a medieval spire removed in 1786, and the statue of Saint Thomas he placed on it bore a noticeable resemblance to the architect himself.

Which Paris Métro station has platforms clad in riveted copper to resemble a Jules Verne submarine?

Arts et Métiers was restyled in 1994 by the Belgian comics artist François Schuiten to mark the bicentenary of the nearby technical conservatoire that gives the stop its name.