Losing its sparkle

PARIS DOMINATES FRANCE, politically and economically. Some argue that in an essentially conservative country it inspired France’s revolutionary fervour over several centuries, from 1789 to 1968. Indeed, it was fear of the city’s political influence that led France to deny Paris a mayor of its own from 1794 to 1977 (except for brief interludes in 1848 and 1870). When the office was eventually reinstated, its first occupant, Jacques Chirac, nursed his presidential ambitions from the Hôtel de Ville.

Paris can claim to be one of the world’s most beautiful cities, with such gems as the Louvre, Sacré Coeur and the museums of Rodin and Picasso. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries it was the cultural capital of Europe. Yet just as the French economy is wilting under competitive pressure, so too is Paris. One example is finance, in which it used to be a world leader. The first overseas office of an American investment bank, Morgan Stanley, opened in Paris in 1967, ten years before it went to London. But since then Paris has not only lost out to London as a financial centre, but dropped out of the top ten and now trails behind even Geneva and Zurich.