Europe's Cosmopolitan Cities: Amsterdam, Brussels & Paris

Amsterdam: A good time! That’s what you’ll have in this beautiful capital of the Netherlands, which feels at once like a 17-century city and a bustling modern metropolis. Famous for its canals and extraordinary museums, Amsterdam is also an intimate city with strangely alluring streets and squares.

Brussels, (brùs´elz) Fr. Bruxelles, city (1991 est. pop. 140,050), capital of Belgium. An important manufacturing center, it is also a seat of the European Union and of NATO. Brussels was inhabited by the Romans and later (7th cent.) by the Franks. It developed into a center of the wool trade in the 13th cent. and became (1430) the seat of the dukes of Burgundy and later (1477) of the governors of the Spanish (after 1714, Austrian) Netherlands. In 1830 it became the capital of an independent Belgium. Its historic buildings include the Maison du Roi (13th cent.), Gothic city hall (15th cent.), and parliament building (18th cent.).

As the French capital, Paris is the commercial, financial, and industrial focus of France, a major transportation hub, and a cultural and intellectual center of international renown. A beautiful city in which tourism is the main industry, Paris is cut by the Seine River. On its stately, formal right (northern) bank are many of the most fashionable streets and shops, and such landmarks as the Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde, Louvre, and Sacré Coeur.

The left bank houses governmental offices and is the site of much of the city’s intellectual life. It is known for its old Latin Quarter and for such landmarks as the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg Palace, the Panthéon, and the modern Pompidou Center (see Beaubourg). The historic core of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small island occupied in part by the Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Above the city rises the Eiffel Tower. Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements (boroughs) and governed by a mayor.

A fishing village when it was conquered (52 B.C.) by Caesar, it became an important Roman town. It was a Merovingian capital in the 5th cent. and became the national capital with the accession (987) of Hugh Capet, count of Paris. It flowered as the center of medieval commerce and scholasticism but suffered severely during the Hundred Years War. Paris consistently displayed a rebellious and independent spirit, as in its resistance to Henry IV (1589-93); the first Fronde (1648-49); the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848; and the Commune of Paris (1871). During World War II it was occupied (1940-44) by the Germans but was relatively undamaged.