Denmark
Denmark the Kingdom of Denmark, is a Nordic country and the southernmost of the Scandinavian nations. Denmark lies southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, is bordered to the south by Germany; the Kingdom of Denmark comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark proper consists of a peninsula, an archipelago of 443 named islands, with the largest being Zealand and the North Jutlandic Island; the islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and a temperate climate. Denmark has a total area of 42,924 km2, land area of 42,394 km2, the total area including Greenland and the Faroe Islands is 2,210,579 km2, a population of 5.8 million. The unified kingdom of Denmark emerged in the 10th century as a proficient seafaring nation in the struggle for control of the Baltic Sea. Denmark and Norway were ruled together under one sovereign ruler in the Kalmar Union, established in 1397 and ending with Swedish secession in 1523.
The areas of Denmark and Norway remained under the same monarch until Denmark -- Norway. Beginning in the 17th century, there were several devastating wars with the Swedish Empire, ending with large cessions of territory to Sweden. After the Napoleonic Wars, Norway was ceded to Sweden, while Denmark kept the Faroe Islands and Iceland. In the 19th century there was a surge of nationalist movements, which were defeated in the 1864 Second Schleswig War. Denmark remained neutral during World War I. In April 1940, a German invasion saw brief military skirmishes while the Danish resistance movement was active from 1943 until the German surrender in May 1945. An industrialised exporter of agricultural produce in the second half of the 19th century, Denmark introduced social and labour-market reforms in the early 20th century that created the basis for the present welfare state model with a developed mixed economy; the Constitution of Denmark was signed on 5 June 1849, ending the absolute monarchy, which had begun in 1660.
It establishes a constitutional monarchy organised as a parliamentary democracy. The government and national parliament are seated in Copenhagen, the nation's capital, largest city, main commercial centre. Denmark exercises hegemonic influence in the Danish Realm, devolving powers to handle internal affairs. Home rule was established in the Faroe Islands in 1948. Denmark negotiated certain opt-outs, it is among the founding members of NATO, the Nordic Council, the OECD, OSCE, the United Nations. Denmark is considered to be one of the most economically and developed countries in the world. Danes enjoy a high standard of living and the country ranks in some metrics of national performance, including education, health care, protection of civil liberties, democratic governance and human development; the country ranks as having the world's highest social mobility, a high level of income equality, is among the countries with the lowest perceived levels of corruption in the world, the eleventh-most developed in the world, has one of the world's highest per capita incomes, one of the world's highest personal income tax rates.
The etymology of the word Denmark, the relationship between Danes and Denmark and the unifying of Denmark as one kingdom, is a subject which attracts debate. This is centered on the prefix "Dan" and whether it refers to the Dani or a historical person Dan and the exact meaning of the -"mark" ending. Most handbooks derive the first part of the word, the name of the people, from a word meaning "flat land", related to German Tenne "threshing floor", English den "cave"; the -mark is believed to mean woodland or borderland, with probable references to the border forests in south Schleswig. The first recorded use of the word Danmark within Denmark itself is found on the two Jelling stones, which are runestones believed to have been erected by Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth; the larger stone of the two is popularly cited as Denmark's "baptismal certificate", though both use the word "Denmark", in the form of accusative ᛏᛅᚾᛘᛅᚢᚱᚴ tanmaurk on the large stone, genitive ᛏᛅᚾᛘᛅᚱᚴᛅᚱ "tanmarkar" on the small stone.
The inhabitants of Denmark are there called "Danes", in the accusative. The earliest archaeological findings in Denmark date back to the Eem interglacial period from 130,000–110,000 BC. Denmark has been inhabited since around 12,500 BC and agriculture has been evident since 3900 BC; the Nordic Bronze Age in Denmark was marked by burial mounds, which left an abundance of findings including lurs and the Sun Chariot. During the Pre-Roman Iron Age, native groups began migrating south, the first tribal Danes came to the country between the Pre-Roman and the Germanic Iron Age, in the Roman Iron Age; the Roman provinces maintained trade routes and relations with native tribes in Denmark, Roman coins have been found in Denmark. Evidence of strong Celtic cultural influence dates from this period in Denmark and much of North-West Europe and is among other things reflected in the finding of the Gundestrup cauldron; the tribal Danes came from the east Danish islands and Scania and spoke an early form of North Germanic.
Historians believe that before their arrival, most of Jutland and the nearest islands were settled by tribal J
Dankvart Dreyer
Dankvart Dreyer was a Danish landscape painter of the Copenhagen School of painters, educated under the guidance of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. Around 1840, he was part of the emerging National Romantic landscape painting scene in Denmark but as a result of his over-dramatic and excessively natural style, he did not fit the aesthetics and the ideology of the period. After being criticized, he turned his back on the artistic establishment and passed into near oblivion. In 1852, when only 36 years old, he died from typhus. Posthumously, half a century after his death, his reputation was restored, prompted by the art historian Karl Madsen, today he is considered to be one of the leading Danish landscape painters of his day, the peer of his more famous contemporaries P. C. Skovgaard and Johan Lundbye; as the youngest of 15 children, Dankvart Dreyer was born on 13 June 1816 in Assens on the Danish island of Funen. His parents were Jørgen Christian Dreyer, a successful merchant, the richest man in town until the national bankruptcy in 1813, his third wife Caroline Dorthea.
Dankvart soon showed a gift for drawing. Another boy in Assens at that time, born the same year as Dankvart, was Jens Adolf Jerichau, to become a prominent artist, he commented on young Dreyer's remarkable gifts and dedication: "While I was fooling around with the other boys, he would be sitting at home with his mother and sister drawing, you can hardly imagine anyone with a greater disposition for art than that boy."Dreyer's godfarther therefore saw to it that in 1831, at the age of 15, the boy was sent to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Under the supervision of his professors, J. L. Lund and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, he trained to become a history painter, the most prestigious artistic discipline at that time, painted some portraits, he was talented and successful, winning several awards before he turned 21. Dreyer had private lessons with Christen Købke, another professor at the Academy, he met a group of fellow Academy students who were studying landscape painting, still a unappreciated discipline at the Academy.
Among them were P. C. Skovgaard and Johan Lundbye who became his close friends and inspired him to take still more interest in landscaping. Alone or together with them, he made frequent excursions to the countryside north of Copenhagen the area around Fredensborg and Jægersborg Dyrehave. There he made detailed studies of nature. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Dreyer never went abroad to further his studies, although he applied for travel scholarships on three occasions. Instead, he travelled in Denmark, his native island of Funen remained a focal point for his artistic attention throughout his career the area around Assens where he had grown up. A place of particular importance to him was the small manor house of Rugaard which he visited every summer from 1837 to 1847 to paint. Several times he sought out the small island of Brandsø in the Little Belt, the narrow strait between Funen and Jutland, where he found a near perfect landscape to his liking with dolmens and distant coasts. Dreyer's appetite for exploring the provinces brought him to Jutland, a rare destination for painters at the time.
He was the first to paint the gentle landscapes along the east coast or the moors of central Jutland. Martinus Rørbye described as the most adventurous of the Danish Golden Age painters, had visited Jutland on the way to Norway back in 1830 and made it all the way to remote district of Thy in north-western Jutland. However, he had found the landscape unsuitable for painting due to the lack of trees; this did not bother Dreyer, struck by the short stories of Steen Steensen Blicher, a distant relative of his. Blicher's descriptions of the stark beauty of the vast, brown-colored heaths of mid Jutland, of its people and exotic dialects, had a mesmerizing effect on the painter. Dreyer first visited the east coast around Aarhus in 1838 and that year he was present when Blicher arranged his first National Awakening Meeting at Himmelbjerget, he went on to paint the heath and, when he returned in 1843, he went all the way to the west coast. In the years around 1840, the influential art historian and critic Niels Laurits Høyen campaigned for nationalistic art, reflecting a tendency, seen all over Europe.
In Denmark, people enthusiastically read Bernhard Severin Ingemann's historic novels and Adam Oehlenschläger while N. F. S. Grundtvig's sermons were drawing large crowds. According to Høyen, too, should contribute to this national awakening. Instead of turning to the Mediterranean area, its landscapes and its people, to classical mythology, for inspiration, they should paint what defined their native Denmark: the Danish landscape and its people, Danish history, Norse mythology. Lundbye and Dankvart had for years preferred Danish subjects and became the leading proponents of the emerging era of National Romantic painting. However, as time progressed, Dreyer turned his back on what was considered good taste by Copenhagen's artistic establishment. Symptomatically and Skovgaard attended Grundtvig's sermons while Dreyer preferred to read Blicher, it was not enough just to paint the Danish landscape in order to satisfy the aestetics and ideology of the time. Good painting, it was believed, should not document the scenery at a specific locale.
It was supposed to be a composed representation of an idealized picture of the nation and the national character. The physicist Hans Christian Ørsted had launched the theory that people reflected the landscape they lived in; the Danish national chara
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal, that belongs to group 8 of the periodic table, it is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Pure iron is rare on the Earth's crust being limited to meteorites. Iron ores are quite abundant, but extracting usable metal from them requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching 1500 °C or higher, about 500 °C higher than what is enough to smelt copper. Humans started to dominate that process in Eurasia only about 2000 BCE, iron began to displace copper alloys for tools and weapons, in some regions, only around 1200 BCE; that event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Iron alloys, such as steel and special steels are now by far the most common industrial metals, because of their mechanical properties and their low cost. Pristine and smooth pure iron surfaces are mirror-like silvery-gray. However, iron reacts with oxygen and water to give brown to black hydrated iron oxides known as rust.
Unlike the oxides of some other metals, that form passivating layers, rust occupies more volume than the metal and thus flakes off, exposing fresh surfaces for corrosion. The body of an adult human contains about 3 to 5 grams of elemental iron in hemoglobin and myoglobin; these two proteins play essential roles in vertebrate metabolism oxygen transport by blood and oxygen storage in muscles. To maintain the necessary levels, human iron metabolism requires a minimum of iron in the diet. Iron is the metal at the active site of many important redox enzymes dealing with cellular respiration and oxidation and reduction in plants and animals. Chemically, the most common oxidation states of iron are +2 and +3. Iron shares many properties of other transition metals, including the other group 8 elements and osmium. Iron forms compounds in a wide range of oxidation states, −2 to +7. Iron forms many coordination compounds. At least four allotropes of iron are known, conventionally denoted α, γ, δ, ε; the first three forms are observed at ordinary pressures.
As molten iron cools past its freezing point of 1538 °C, it crystallizes into its δ allotrope, which has a body-centered cubic crystal structure. As it cools further to 1394 °C, it changes to its γ-iron allotrope, a face-centered cubic crystal structure, or austenite. At 912 °C and below, the crystal structure again becomes the bcc α-iron allotrope; the physical properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures have been studied extensively, because of their relevance to theories about the cores of the Earth and other planets. Above 10 GPa and temperatures of a few hundred kelvin or less, α-iron changes into another hexagonal close-packed structure, known as ε-iron; the higher-temperature γ-phase changes into ε-iron, but does so at higher pressure. Some controversial experimental evidence exists for a stable β phase at pressures above 50 GPa and temperatures of at least 1500 K, it is supposed to have a double hcp structure. The inner core of the Earth is presumed to consist of an iron-nickel alloy with ε structure.
The melting and boiling points of iron, along with its enthalpy of atomization, are lower than those of the earlier 3d elements from scandium to chromium, showing the lessened contribution of the 3d electrons to metallic bonding as they are attracted more and more into the inert core by the nucleus. This same trend appears for ruthenium but not osmium; the melting point of iron is experimentally well defined for pressures less than 50 GPa. For greater pressures, published data still varies by tens of gigapascals and over a thousand kelvin. Below its Curie point of 770 °C, α-iron changes from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic: the spins of the two unpaired electrons in each atom align with the spins of its neighbors, creating an overall magnetic field; this happens because the orbitals of those two electrons do not point toward neighboring atoms in the lattice, therefore are not involved in metallic bonding. In the absence of an external source of magnetic field, the atoms get spontaneously partitioned into magnetic domains, about 10 micrometres across, such that the atoms in each domain have parallel spins, but different domains have other orientations.
Thus a macroscopic piece of iron will have a nearly zero overall magnetic field. Application of an external magnetic field causes the domains that are magnetized in the same general direction to grow at the expense of adjacent ones that point in other directions, reinforcing the external field; this effect is exploited in devices that needs to channel magnetic fields, such as electrical transformers, magnetic recording heads, electric motors. Impurities, lattice defects, or grain and particle boundaries can "pin" the domains in the new positions, so that the effect persists after the external field is removed -- thus turning the iron object into a magnet. Similar behavior is exhibited by some iron compounds, such as the fer
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and most populous city of Denmark. As of July 2018, the city has a population of 777,218, it forms the core of the wider urban area of the Copenhagen metropolitan area. Copenhagen is situated on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand; the Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by road. A Viking fishing village established in the 10th century in the vicinity of what is now Gammel Strand, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century it consolidated its position as a regional centre of power with its institutions and armed forces. After suffering from the effects of plague and fire in the 18th century, the city underwent a period of redevelopment; this included construction of the prestigious district of Frederiksstaden and founding of such cultural institutions as the Royal Theatre and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After further disasters in the early 19th century when Horatio Nelson attacked the Dano-Norwegian fleet and bombarded the city, rebuilding during the Danish Golden Age brought a Neoclassical look to Copenhagen's architecture.
Following the Second World War, the Finger Plan fostered the development of housing and businesses along the five urban railway routes stretching out from the city centre. Since the turn of the 21st century, Copenhagen has seen strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investment in its institutions and infrastructure; the city is the cultural and governmental centre of Denmark. Copenhagen's economy has seen rapid developments in the service sector through initiatives in information technology and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund Bridge, Copenhagen has become integrated with the Swedish province of Scania and its largest city, Malmö, forming the Øresund Region. With a number of bridges connecting the various districts, the cityscape is characterised by parks and waterfronts. Copenhagen's landmarks such as Tivoli Gardens, The Little Mermaid statue, the Amalienborg and Christiansborg palaces, Rosenborg Castle Gardens, Frederik's Church, many museums and nightclubs are significant tourist attractions.
The largest lake of Denmark, Arresø, lies around 27 miles northwest of the City Hall Square. Copenhagen is home to the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School and the IT University of Copenhagen; the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark. Copenhagen is home to the FC Brøndby football clubs; the annual Copenhagen Marathon was established in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world; the Copenhagen Metro launched in 2002 serves central Copenhagen while the Copenhagen S-train, the Lokaltog and the Coast Line network serves and connects central Copenhagen to outlying boroughs. To relieve traffic congestion, the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link road and rail construction is planned, because the narrow 9-9.5 mile isthmus between Roskilde Fjord and Køge Bugt forms a traffic bottleneck. The Copenhagen-Ringsted Line will relieve traffic congestion in the corridor between Roskilde and Copenhagen.
Serving two million passengers a month, Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is the busiest airport in the Nordic countries. Copenhagen's name reflects its origin as a place of commerce; the original designation in Old Norse, from which Danish descends, was Kaupmannahǫfn, meaning "merchants' harbour". By the time Old Danish was spoken, the capital was called Køpmannæhafn, with the current name deriving from centuries of subsequent regular sound change. An exact English equivalent would be "chapman's haven". However, the English term for the city was adapted from Kopenhagen. Although the earliest historical records of Copenhagen are from the end of the 12th century, recent archaeological finds in connection with work on the city's metropolitan rail system revealed the remains of a large merchant's mansion near today's Kongens Nytorv from c. 1020. Excavations in Pilestræde have led to the discovery of a well from the late 12th century; the remains of an ancient church, with graves dating to the 11th century, have been unearthed near where Strøget meets Rådhuspladsen.
These finds indicate. Substantial discoveries of flint tools in the area provide evidence of human settlements dating to the Stone Age. Many historians believe the town dates to the late Viking Age, was founded by Sweyn I Forkbeard; the natural harbour and good herring stocks seem to have attracted fishermen and merchants to the area on a seasonal basis from the 11th century and more permanently in the 13th century. The first habitations were centred on Gammel Strand in the 11thcentury or earlier; the earliest written mention of the town was in the 12th century when Saxo Grammaticus in Gesta Danorum referred to it as Portus
Constantin Hansen
Carl Christian Constantin Hansen was one of the painters associated with the Golden Age of Danish Painting. He was interested in literature and mythology, inspired by art historian Niels Laurits Høyen, he tried to recreate a national historical painting based on Norse mythology, he painted many altarpieces and portraits, including the monumental oil painting The Danish Constituent Assembly between 1861 and 1865. He was born in the son of portrait painter Hans Hansen; the family soon relocated to Vienna, where Constanze Mozart, the widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, became godmother at his christening. Within his first year, the family moved to Copenhagen, he entered the architecture school of the Royal Danish Academy of Art at 12 years of age, but changed his course of study to painting at the age of 21. He began his training under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg in 1828, he lost both his parents at about this time to typhus, became the sole supporter of his younger sisters. He took over several commissions that had belonged to his father, including some copies to the Portrait Collection at Frederiksborg Palace and decorative paintings to Christiansborg Palace.
In 1835 he received a two-year stipend to travel abroad, followed up by an additional year's stipend. His travels took him through Berlin, Prague and Munich on his way to Italy, where he travelled extensively and stayed longer periods in Rome and Pompeii. In Italy he met the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, he travelled with other Danish artists, including Jørgen Roed, Christen Købke and decorative painter Georg Hilker. The Copenhagen Art Union commissioned a painting from Hansen in 1837, he provided them with A Group of Danish Artists in Rome. In addition he painted Italian folk scenes, studies of Roman antiquities and architecture that reflect Eckersberg's spirit. After eight years in Italy he returned to Denmark, staying in Munich, where he studied the technique of fresco painting, in anticipation of a commission, along with Georg Hilker, to decorate the University of Copenhagen's vestibule on Frue Plads; this work continued from 1844 until 1853. Hansen painted the mythological figures, while Hilker frameworks.
He married Magdalene Barbara Købke in 1846, they had thirteen children. However, four children died within one year after being born and one of their sons, Hans Christian, was killed at the age of nineteen in a shipwreck. In 1854 he was named professor at the Academy, but first became member of the Academy in 1864. One of his daughters, Elise Konstantin-Hansen, became a recognized painter, another Kristiane Konstantin-Hansen, became a tapestry weaver. List of Danish painters KID Kunst Index Danmark Danish Biographical Encyclopedia Images of the Old Norse Gods Wikimedia Commons Monrad, Kasper; the Golden Age of Danish Painting. New York: Hudson Hills Press
Schist
Schist is a medium-grade metamorphic rock. Schist has medium to large, sheet-like grains in a preferred orientation, it is defined by having more than 50% platy and elongated minerals finely interleaved with quartz and feldspar. These lamellar minerals include micas, talc, hornblende and others. Quartz occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is produced. Schist is garnetiferous. Schist has larger grains than phyllite. Geological foliation with medium to large grained flakes in a preferred sheetlike orientation is called schistosity; the names of various schists are derived from their mineral constituents. For example, schists composed of biotite and muscovite are called mica schists. Most schists are mica schists, but graphite and chlorite schists are common. Schists are named for their prominent or unusual mineral constituents, as in the case of garnet schist, tourmaline schist, glaucophane schist; the individual mineral grains in schist, drawn out into flaky scales by heat and pressure, can be seen with the naked eye.
Schist is characteristically foliated, meaning that the individual mineral grains split off into flakes or slabs. The word schist is derived from the Greek word σχίζειν meaning "to split", a reference to the ease with which schists can be split along the plane in which the platy minerals lie. Most schists are derived from clays and muds that have passed through a series of metamorphic processes involving the production of shales and phyllites as intermediate steps. Certain schists are derived from fine-grained igneous rocks such as tuffs. Before the mid-18th century, the terms slate and schist were not differentiated by those involved with mining. During metamorphism, rocks which were sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic are converted into schists and gneisses. If the composition of the rocks was similar, they may be difficult to distinguish from one another if the metamorphism has been great. A quartz-porphyry, for example, a fine grained feldspathic sandstone, may both be converted into a grey or pink mica-schist.
However, it is possible to distinguish between sedimentary and igneous schists and gneisses. If, for example, the whole district occupied by these rocks has traces of bedding, clastic structure, or unconformability it may be a sign that the original rock was sedimentary. In other cases intrusive junctions, chilled edges, contact alteration or porphyritic structure may prove that in its original condition a metamorphic gneiss was an igneous rock; the last appeal is to the chemistry, for there are certain rock types which occur only as sediments, while others are found only among igneous masses, however advanced the metamorphism may be, it modifies the chemical composition of the mass greatly. Such rocks as limestones, dolomites and aluminous shales have definite chemical characteristics which distinguish them when recrystallized; the schists are classified principally according to the minerals they consist of and on their chemical composition. For example, many metamorphic limestones and calc-schists, with crystalline dolomites, contain silicate minerals such as mica, diopside, scapolite and feldspar.
They are derived from calcareous sediments of different degrees of purity. Another group is rich in quartz, with variable amounts of white and black mica, feldspar and hornblende; these were once arenaceous rocks. The graphitic schists may be believed to represent sediments once containing coal or plant remains. Among schists of igneous origin there are the silky calc-schists, the foliated serpentines, the white mica-schists and banded halleflintas, which have been derived from rhyolites, quartz-porphyries and felsic tuffs; the majority of mica-schists, are altered claystones and shales, pass into the normal sedimentary rocks through various types of phyllite and mica-slates. They are among the most common metamorphic rocks; the diversity in appearance and composition is great, but they form a well-defined group not difficult to recognize, from the abundance of black and white micas and their thin, schistose character. A subgroup is the andalusite-, staurolite-, kyanite- and sillimanite-schists which make their appearance in the vicinity of gneissose granites, have been affected by contact metamorphism.
In geotechnical engineering a schistosity plane forms a discontinuity that may have a large influence on the mechanical behavior of rock masses in, for example, foundation, or slope construction. List of rock textures – A list of rock textural and morphological terms Greenschist Pelite An Examination of Mica Schist by Andrea Samuels, Micscape magazine. Photographs of Manhattan schist. by USGS: Idaho, Univ. of Idaho, articles cited
Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
