The City of Paris is divided into twenty '' arrondissements municipaux'', administrative districts, more simply referred to as ''arrondissements'' (). These are not to be confused with departmental arrondissements, which subdivide the larger French departments. The number of the arrondissement is indicated by the last two digits in most Parisian postal codes (75001 up to 75020). In addition to their number, each arrondissement also has a name, often for a local monument. For example, the 5th arrondissement is also called "Panthéon" in reference to the eponymous building. The first four arrondissements have a shared administration, called

Paris Centre Paris Centre is an administrative division of Paris encompassing the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th arrondissements of the city. In August 2016, ministers Jean-Michel Baylet, Bernard Cazeneuve and Estelle Grelier proposed reforms to the territorial di ...

Description

The twenty arrondissements are arranged in the form of a

clockwise Two-dimensional rotation can occur in two possible directions. Clockwise motion (abbreviated CW) proceeds in the same direction as a clock's hands: from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back up to the top. The opposite ...

spiral (often likened to a

snail shell The gastropod shell is part of the body of a Gastropoda, gastropod or snail, a kind of mollusc. The shell is an exoskeleton, which protects from predators, mechanical damage, and dehydration, but also serves for muscle attachment and calcium s ...

), starting from the middle of the city, with the first on the

Right Bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrai ...

(north bank) of the Seine. In French, notably on street signs, the number is often given in Roman numerals. For example, the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "' ...

belongs to the '' VII^e arrondissement'' while Gare de l'Est is in the ''X^e arrondissement''. In daily speech, people use only the ordinal number corresponding to the arrondissement, e.g. "Elle habite dans le sixième", "She lives in the 6th (arrondissement)". Due to

suburbanization Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of (sub)urban sprawl. As a consequence of the movement of households and businesses out of the city centers, low-density, peripheral urba ...

, the population of Paris has gradually shifted outward, with only two arrondissements still growing.

Governance

Uniquely among French cities, Paris is both a municipality (''commune'') and a department (''département''). Under the PLM Law (''Loi PLM'') of 1982, which redefined the governance of Paris, Lyon, and Marseille (hence the PLM

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

), there are both a city council called the

Council of Paris The Council of Paris (French: ''Conseil de Paris'') is the deliberative body responsible for governing Paris, the capital of France. It possesses both the powers of a municipal council (''conseil municipal'') and those of a departmental counci ...

and 20 arrondissement councils in Paris. The PLM Law also set limits to the prerogatives of the mayor of Paris, who has to deal with the powers granted to the prefect of police on security issues. The 20 arrondissement councils (conseils d'arrondissement) are similar in operation to a municipal council (conseil municipal) but with very few powers. Its members are elected at municipal elections in the same way as in municipalities with more than 3,500 inhabitants. Each arrondissement council is made up of 2/3 members elected specifically as arrondissement councillors, while Council of Paris members representing the arrondissement also sit '' ex officio'' on their local arrondissement council. For example, the council of the

19th arrondissement The 19th arrondissement of Paris (''XIXe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as ''dix-neuvième''. The arrondissement, known as Butte-Chaumont, i ...

has 42 members, of which 28 are ''conseillers d'arrondissement'' who only sit on the arrondissement council, while 14 are ''conseillers de Paris'' who also sit on the city council. At its first meeting after the elections, each arrondissement council elects its mayor. Each arrondissement is subdivided administratively into four ''quartiers''. Paris thus has 80 ''quartiers administratifs'', each containing a police station. For a table giving the names of the eighty ''quartiers'', see

Quarters of Paris Each of the 20 arrondissements of Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most dens ...

Arrondissements

Notes:
1. With the

Bois de Vincennes The Bois de Vincennes (), located on the eastern edge of Paris, is the largest public park in the city. It was created between 1855 and 1866 by Emperor Napoleon III. The park is next to the Château de Vincennes, a former residence of the King ...

2. Without the Bois de Vincennes
3. With the

Bois de Boulogne The Bois de Boulogne (, "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by t ...

4. Without the Bois de Boulogne
5. 2005 is the year of the most recent official estimate; population of these arrondissements may still be growing

History

On 11 October 1795, Paris was divided into twelve arrondissements. They were numbered from west to east, with the numbers 1–9 situated on the

of the Seine and the numbers 10–12 on the

Left Bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...

. Each arrondissement was subdivided into four ''quartiers'', which corresponded to the 48 original districts created in 1790. Emperor

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...

and the Prefect of the Seine Baron Haussmann developed a plan to incorporate several of the surrounding communes into the Paris jurisdiction in the late 1850s. Parliament passed the necessary legislation in 1859, and the expansion took effect when the law was promulgated on 3 November 1859 (though city taxes were not extended to the new neighborhoods until 1 July 1860). The previous twelve arrondissements were done away with, and twenty new arrondissements were created. In historical records, when it is necessary to distinguish between the two systems, the original arrondissements are indicated by adding the term ''ancienne'' ("former" or "old"), for example, ''2ème ancienne'' or ''7ème anc''. Before the reorganization, non-married couples who lived together were said to have "married at the town hall of the 13th arrondissement" ("''se marier à la mairie du 13e arrondissement''"), as a jocular reference to there being no 13th. When Haussmann released his plan for the new boundaries and numbering system, residents of Passy objected because it placed them in the new 13th arrondissement. The mayor of Passy, Jean-Frédéric Possoz, devised the idea of a numbering the arrondissements in a spiral pattern beginning on the Right Bank, which put Passy in the 16th. This system turned the Louvre area, which contained the

Tuileries Palace The Tuileries Palace (french: Palais des Tuileries, ) was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. It was the usual Parisian residence of most French monarchs, f ...

and other imperial palaces, into the 1st. The Gobelins area would become the

13th In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave pl ...

instead. In early 2016, mayor

Anne Hidalgo Ana María "Anne" Hidalgo Aleu (, ; born 1959) is a Spanish-French politician who has served as Mayor of Paris since 2014, the first woman to hold the office. She is a member of the Socialist Party. Hidalgo served as First Deputy Mayor of Paris ...

proposed that the first four arrondissements should have their administrations merged, and the

approved this on 15 February. The four have a combined population of about 100,000, with the 1st,

2nd A second is the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI). Second, Seconds or 2nd may also refer to: Mathematics * 2 (number), as an ordinal (also written as ''2nd'' or ''2d'') * Second of arc, an angular measurement unit, ...

, 4th, and 3rd arrondissements in that order being the four smallest in Paris. The matter was taken up in the National Assembly in August 2016, and approved in February 2017. In a postal referendum from 8 to 14 October 2018, the town hall of the 3rd arrondissement was chosen to house the new shared administration, and the name "

" was chosen for the sector. The reform was implemented on 29 June 2020, the day after the second round of the 2020 Paris municipal election, with the four arrondissements now sharing a mayor and a district council. The four arrondissements continue to exist, but are no longer used as administrative and electoral sectors.Paris redraws map as four arrondissements unite under new name
from The Local France

References

Bibliography

External links

Official Paris website

Website showing location, numbering conventions, and general info for arrondissements
{{Use dmy dates, date=March 2016

Administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, admini ...