2. Paris is populous city of France. It is situated on
the Sience River, in the north of the country, at
the heart of the Île-de-France region. Within its
administrative limits (the 20 arrondissements),
the city had 2,234,105 inhabitants in 2009 while
its metropolitan areais one of the largest
population centres in Europe with more than
12 million inhabitants.
3. Paris is home to the association football club Paris
Saint-Germain FC and the rugby union club Stade
Français. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for
the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located in Saint-Denis.
Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland
Garros. Paris played host to the 1900 and1924
Summer Olympics, the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cup,
and the 2007 Rugby World Cup. The city is a major
rail, highway, and air-transport hub, served by the
two international airports Paris-Charles de
Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the city's
subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million
passengers daily. Paris is the hub of the national road
network, and is surrounded by three orbital roads:
the Périphérique, the A86 motorway, and
theFrancilienne motorway in the outer suburbs.
4. Centuries of cultural and political development have brought Paris
a variety of museums, theatres, monuments and architectural
styles. Many of its masterpieces such as the Louvre and the Arc de
Triomphe are iconic buildings, especially its internationally
recognized symbol, the Eiffel Tower. Long regarded as an
international centre for the arts, works by history's most famous
painters can be found in the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and its
many other museums and galleries. Paris is a global hub of fashion
and has been referred to as the "international capital of style",
noted for its haute couture tailoring, its high-end boutiques, and
the twice-yearly Paris Fashion Week. It is world renowned for
its haute cuisine, attracting many of the world's leading chefs.
Many of France's most prestigious universities and Grandes
Écoles are in Paris or its suburbs, and France's major newspapers Le
Monde,Le Figaro, Libération are based in the city, and Le
Parisien in Saint-Ouen near Paris.
