Paris
Urbanism and architecture

Paris is one of the few world capitals that has rarely seen destruction by catastrophe or war. As a result, even its earliest history is visible in its streetmap, and centuries of rulers adding their respective architectural marks on the capital has resulted in an accumulated wealth of history-rich monuments and buildings whose beauty plays a large part in giving Paris the reputation it has today. At its origin, before the Middle Ages, Paris was composed of several islands and sandbanks in a bend of the Seine. Of those, two remain today: Île Saint-Louis and the Île de la Cité. A third one is the 1827 artificially created Île aux Cygnes.

Modern Paris owes much of its downtown plan and architectural harmony to Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. Between 1853 and 1870 they rebuilt the city centre, created the wide downtown boulevards and squares where the boulevards intersected, imposed standard facades along the boulevards, and required that the facades be built of the distinctive cream-grey " Paris stone ". They built the major parks around central Paris. The high residential population of the city centre makes Paris much different from most other major western cities.

Paris's urbanism laws have been under strict control since the early 17th century, particularly where street-front alignment, building height and building distribution is concerned. The 210 m (690 ft) Tour Montparnasse was both Paris's and France's tallest building since 1973, Since 2011, this record has been held by the La Défense quarter Tour First tower in Courbevoie.
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