page_title: Administration of Paris
section_title: Municipal offices
hierarchical_section_title: Administration of Paris / Municipal offices
caption_attribution_description: English: Paris' city hall (hôtel de ville) at night. Français&#160;: L'hôtel de ville de Paris de nuit
context_page_description: As the capital of France, Paris is the seat of France's national government. For the executive, the two chief officers each have their own official residences, which also serve as their offices. The President of France resides at the Élysée Palace in the 8th arrondissement, while the Prime Minister's seat is at the Hôtel Matignon in the 7th arrondissement. Government ministries are located in various parts of the city; many are located in the 7th arrondissement, near the Matignon.
  The two houses of the French Parliament are located on the left bank. The upper house, the Senate, meets in the Palais du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement, while the more important lower house, the Assemblée Nationale, meets in the Palais Bourbon in the 7th arrondissement. The President of the Senate, the second-highest public official in France after the President of the Republic, resides in the Petit Luxembourg, a small annex to the Palais du Luxembourg.
  France's highest courts are located in Paris.
context_section_description: Each of Paris's twenty arrondissements has its own town hall and a directly elected council (conseil d'arrondissement), which, in turn, elects an arrondissement mayor. A selection of members from each arrondissement council form the Council of Paris (conseil de Paris), which, in turn, elects the mayor of Paris.
  In medieval times, Paris was governed by a merchant-elected municipality whose head was the provost of the merchants. In addition to regulating city commerce, the provost of the merchants was responsible for some civic duties such as the guarding of city walls and the cleaning of city streets. The creation of the provost of Paris from the 13th century diminished the merchant Provost's responsibilities and powers considerably.
  
  A direct representative of the king, in a role resembling somewhat the préfet of later years, the Provost (prévôt) of Paris oversaw the application and execution of law and order in the city and its surrounding prévôté (county) from his office in the Grand Châtelet. Many functions from both provost offices were transferred to the office of the crown-appointed lieutenant general of police upon its creation in 1667. For centuries, the prévôt and magistrates of the Châtelet clashed with the administrators of the Hôtel de Ville over jurisdiction; the latter notably included the quartiniers, each of whom was responsible for one of the sixteen quartiers (which were in turn divided into fourcinquantaines, each with its cinquantainier, and those in turn were divided into dizaines, administered bydizainiers):
  
  All of these men were in principle elected by the local bourgeois. At any one time, therefore, 336 men had shared administrative responsibility for street cleaning and maintenance, for public health, law, and order. The quartiniers maintained the official lists of "bourgeois de Paris", ran local elections, could impose fines for breaches of the bylaws, and had a role in tax assessment. They met at the Hôtel de Ville to confer on matters of citywide importance and each year selected eight of "the most notable inhabitants of the quarter", who together with other local officials would elect the city council.
   The last of the Prévôt des marchands of Paris was assassinated on the afternoon of the French Revolution Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. Paris became an official "commune" from the creation of the administrative division on 14 December the same year, and its provisional "Paris commune" revolutionary municipality was replaced with the city's first municipal constitution and government from 9 October 1790. Through the turmoil of the 1794 Thermidorian Reaction, it became apparent that revolutionary Paris's political independence was a threat to any governing power: The office of mayor was abolished the same year, and its municipal council one year later.
  Although the municipal council was recreated in 1834, for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Paris — along with the larger Seine département of which it was a centre — was under the direct control of the state-appointed prefect (préfet) of the Seine department (until 1968) and the prefect of Paris (1968-1977). This left the largest city in the nation as the only one without a mayor, meaning that Paris had less autonomy than the smallest village. The state-appointed Prefect of Police was in charge of police in the same jurisdiction.   With the exception of a few brief occasions, the city did not have a mayor from 1794 to 1977, and the Paris Prefecture of Police is still under state control today.
  Despite its dual existence as commune and département, Paris has a single council to govern both; the Council of Paris, presided over by the mayor of Paris, meets as either as a municipal council (conseil municipal) or a departmental council (conseil général), depending on the issue to be debated. Paris's modern administrative organisation still retains some traces of the former Seine département jurisdiction. The Prefecture of Police (also directing Paris's fire brigades), for example, has still a jurisdiction extending to Paris's petite cou
caption: The Hôtel de Ville, Paris (town hall).
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