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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an administrative-limits area of 105 square kilometres (41 square miles) and a 2015 population of 2,229,621. The city is a commune and department, and the capital-heart of the 12,012-square-kilometre (4,638-square-mile) Île-de-France region (colloquially known as the ‘Paris Region’), whose 2016 population of 12,142,802 represents roughly 18 percent of the population of France.[5] By the 17th century, Paris had become one of Europe’s major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, a position that it retains still today. The Paris Region had a GDP of €649.6 billion (US $763.4 billion) in 2014, accounting for 30.4 percent of the GDP of France. According to official estimates, in 2013-14 the Paris Region had the third-highest GDP in the world and the largest regional GDP in the EU.

Cultural Tours

Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. Tourism may be international, or within the traveller’s country. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go “beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only”, as people “traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”.

Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country’s balance of payments. Today, tourism is a major source of income for many countries, and affects the economy of both the source and host countries, in some cases being of vital importance.