5th World Congress on
Womens Health and Midwifery

Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its early and extensive system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light".[7] Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world.

The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12.271.794 habitants on January 1, 2023, or about 19% of the population of France,[2] making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, the highest in Europe.[8] According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, in 2022, Paris was the city with the ninth-highest cost of living in the world.