Where did Paris first start?

Answer 1

Basically, on the island which is now Ile de la Cité.

Many towns start on hills because they are fortresses, the homes of warlike aristocrats round whom the common folk huddle for protection. But Paris was from the start commercial, a trading town whose ways were essentially opposed to the aristocratic principle. For traders, the site was ideal; a comparatively easy crossing-point on the great river that was the principal highway of the region, on an easily defensible island midway between the confluences of the Oise and the Marne.

To the North, a former branch of the Seine had left a marsh, with a sort of natural causeway across it about where the Boulevard de Sebastopol is now, leading to the hills of Montmartre, Ménilmontant and the Buttes Chaumont. To the South, more hills, now the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Buttes aux Cailles and Montparnasse. Two streams entered the Seine among the numerous little islands; the Bièvre in the South, and in the North the Grange Batelière, which still runs in a tunnel below the Opéra, factual home of the imaginary Phantom.

The Parisii arrived with the great Gaulish invasions of 300 BC, and soon built a flourishing town with two wooden bridges whose sites are now marked by the Pont Notre Dame and the Petit Pont. By the time the Romans came, Lutetia (the name means marshy was big enough to send an army of 8,000 men to help Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar. Unfortunately, Caesar simultaneously sent Labienus to capture Lutetia, which the absence of its warriors rendered comparatively painless. The inhabitants, however, burnt the place down rather than surrender it to the Romans.

That was in 52 BC. Over the next 300 years Lutetia developed into a city of some importance. Reserving the Island for administration and religion, the romanised Parisii spread onto the Left Bank to the South of the river. The Right Bank at this stage was mostly marsh.

For the rest of the history, see http://www.hgbservices.com/parihist.htm