What is the capital of France?

Paris became the centre of France because of geography before politics. It sits on the Seine at a natural crossing point in the middle of a fertile agricultural basin, with rivers radiating outward in most directions, which made it the obvious hub for a kingdom expanding from a small royal domain. The Capetian kings settled there and never really left, and every subsequent regime, from monarchy through revolution and empire to republic, kept the seat of power in the same place, steadily concentrating administration, courts, universities and finance in one city. That centralisation was deliberate policy, reinforced when Napoleon organised the country into departments answering to Paris and again when the rail network was built as spokes radiating from the capital. The nineteenth-century rebuilding under Haussmann, which drove wide boulevards through the medieval fabric, produced the city most visitors picture today.

France's rail and road distances are still measured from a marker outside Notre-Dame, a legacy of that centralised layout.