The agglomeration has grown well beyond the city's administrative limits. The

Cityscape[edit]

Panorama of Paris as seen from the Eiffel Tower as full 360-degree view (river flowing from north-east to south-west, right to left)

Urbanism and architecture[edit]

See also: Architecture of Paris, Haussmann's renovation of Paris, and List of tallest buildings and structures in the Paris region

Camille Pissaro, Boulevard Montmartre, 1897, Hermitage Museum
Most French rulers since the Middle Ages made a point of leaving their mark on a city that, contrary to many other of the world's capitals, has never been destroyed by catastrophe or war. In modernising its infrastructure through the centuries, Paris has preserved even its earliest history in its street map.^{[citation needed]} At its origin, before the Middle Ages, the city was composed around several islands and sandbanks in a bend of the Seine; of those, two remain today: the île Saint-Louis, the île de la Cité; a third one is the 1827 artificially created île aux Cygnes. Modern Paris owes much to its late 19th century Second Empire remodelling by the Baron Haussmann: many of modern Paris's busiest streets, avenues and boulevards today are a result of that city renovation. Paris also owes its style to its aligned street-fronts, distinctive cream-grey "Paris stone" building ornamentation, aligned top-floor balconies, and tree-lined boulevards. The high residential population of its city centre makes it much different from most other western global cities.^[115]
Paris's urbanism laws have been under strict control since the early 17th century,^[116] particularly where street-front alignment, building height and building distribution is concerned. In recent developments, a 1974–2010 building height limitation of 37 metres (121 ft) was raised to 50 m (160 ft) in central areas and 180 metres (590 ft) in some of Paris's peripheral quarters, yet for some of the city's more central quarters, even older building-height laws still remain in effect.^[116] The 210 metres (690 ft) Montparnasse tower was both Paris and France's tallest building until 1973,^[117] but this record has been held by the La Défense quarter Tour First tower in Courbevoie since its 2011 construction. A new project for La Défense, called Hermitage Plaza, launched in 2009, proposes to build two towers, 85 and 86 stories or 320 metres (1,050 feet) high, which would be the tallest buildings in the European Union, just slightly shorter than the Eiffel Tower. They were scheduled for completion in 2019 or 2020, but as of January 2015 construction had not yet begun, and there were questions in the press about the future of the project.^[118][119]
Parisian examples of European architecture date back more than a millennium; including the Romanesque church of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1014–1163); the early Gothic Architecture of the Basilica of Saint-Denis (1144), the Notre Dame Cathedral (1163–1345), the Flamboyant Gothic of Saint Chapelle (1239–1248), the Baroque churches of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis (1627–1641) and Les Invalides (1670–1708). The 19th century produced the neoclassical church of La Madeleine (1808–1842); the Palais Garnier Opera House (1875); the neo-Byzantine Basilica of Sacré-Cœur (1875–1919), and the exuberant Belle Époque modernism of the Eiffel Tower (1889). Striking examples of 20th-century architecture include the Centre Georges Pompidou by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano (1977), and the Louvre Pyramid by I.M. Pei (1989). Contemporary architecture includes the Musée du Quai Branly by Jean Nouvel (2006) and the new contemporary art museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation by Frank Gehry (2014).^[120]