How many people live in the city of Paris?

How to get close to this number

This is the question where the city-versus-region gap is widest, and knowing that is the whole answer. The administrative city stops at the ring road and covers only about a hundred square kilometres, so despite the global stature the resident count is small — around two million, well below what a world capital suggests.

The regional figure is six times larger, at around twelve million, and that is the population most people actually mean. Almost everyone who works in the famous city lives outside the administrative boundary, so a city-proper figure describes the historic core and not the urban reality around it.

The reason the boundary is so tight is historical: it follows a nineteenth-century fortification line, and the city has not annexed its suburbs the way London, Berlin or New York did. Administrative geography preserves old decisions, and this is the clearest European example of a city whose statistics are shaped by a wall that no longer exists.