City walls of Paris

In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, Julius Caesar wrote: "Id est oppidum Parisiorum, quod positum est in insula fluminis Sequanae" ("This is a town of the Parisii, situated on an island on the river of the Seine"), indicating that Lutetia was a fortified camp on an island.

The relationship between this island and the Île de la Cité has not been demonstrated, and excavations have not uncovered anything predating the reign of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

Lutetia developed on the left bank of the Seine during Roman times, and to a lesser extent on the Île de la Cité.

During the first barbarian invasions in AD 285, the people of Lutetia abandoned the left bank, taking refuge on the Île de la Cité and destroying the bridges.

Paris grew very quickly during the early Middle Ages and soon extended from the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève to the roads leading to the abbey of Saint-Denis.

From 1670 onward, Louis XIV believed that Paris had been made a secure city as a result of his conquests, and he therefore ordered the wall destroyed.

The Wall of the Farmers-General was built in the years between 1784 and 1791 under the direction of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and at the request of the Ferme Générale.

This wall was later replaced by a second belt of boulevards: Charonne, Ménilmontant, Belleville, La Villette, La Chapelle, Clichy, Batignolles, Courcelles, avenue de Wagram and Iena, streets Benjamin Franklin and Alboni, boulevard de Grenelle, Garibaldi, Pasteur, Montparnasse, Edgar Quinet, Raspail, Saint-Jacques, Auguste-Blanqui, Vincent Auriol, Bercy, and Picpus.