Like Gigi in Colette's eponymous novella, Paris has grown up to be a great beauty but only after rather inauspicious beginnings that suggested the city would never enjoy general admiration.
Paris was well into her centennial teens before it became clear she would become the undisputed capital of France. During the Roman era, the city - then called Lutetia - was of less economic, political or cultural importance than the likes of Nimes, Lyon, Autun and Reims. The name Paris, by the way, derives from the Gaulish Parisii tribe that occupied this region of France at the time of the Roman invasion.
Of course, once the city had become of some consequence, more fanciful notions about her origins and founding fathers were considered necessary. By the 12th century, for example, it was being proposed that Paris had been established by survivors from the fall of Troy, possibly even King Priam's son, Paris. A few hundred years later, the city was given a still more ancient founding father, this role now being assigned to Japhet, son of Noah; "the queen of cities", as a ninth-century chronicler called her, required only the most prestigious antecedents. And these had to be superior to those enjoyed by Paris's principal rival as the most important city in Europe, Rome, which had well- attested origins.
Although Colin Jones does not state this, surely the physical appearance of Rome and its architectural legacy from the Imperial era must also have acted as a spur for successive rulers of France to aggrandise their nation's capital? This process began in the early-medieval period under the Capetian monarchy but the grandeur of the modern city effectively dates from the accession in 1589 of Henri IV, the Huguenot who became Roman Catholic because, as he famously commented, "Paris is worth a Mass".
He was responsible for the construction of the Pont Neuf, described by Jones as "the Eiffel Tower of the Ancien Régime". Henri IV also planned the city's first two squares, the Place des Vosges and the Place Dauphine, both of which still exist.
Ever since his time, the majority of France's heads of state, whether kings, emperors or presidents, have continued to leave their mark on Paris, recognising that this will very possibly be the most visible legacy they can achieve. The late President Mitterrand, for example, undertook an ambitious programme of Grands Projets that included a new opera house at Bastille, the Bibliothèque de France in Tolbiac-Massena, the great arch at La Défense and, most familiar to tourists, the pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre; the current president, Jacques Chirac, has his own ambitions in this direction, with the establishment of a new museum on the Quai Branly.
But, as Jones notes in his conclusion, the aggrandisement of Paris affects only the core of the city, those 20 arrondisements created in the 19th century and enclosed in the 20th by a ring motorway known as the boulevard périphérique. The population of Paris intra muros now stands at around 2.1 million (down from 2.9 million in 1914), while that of the city's surrounding suburbs stands at more than 10 million. And while there are comfortable exceptions such as Neuilly, some of those suburbs are as grim and desolate as any found across the world.
The pleasures of Paris lie firmly within its centre, although here too there is less stability than might appear to be the case. Jones notes that whereas the city held 40,000 cafés in the late 19th century, this number has dropped to around 2,000 and remains under threat from fast-food outlets and their ilk. There is, after all, a thriving branch of McDonald's in the heart of St Germain. Nevertheless, when compared with many other capital cities, Paris has survived the past 100 years with the essence of its long- established character and appearance intact (although Jones does include an elegiac obituary to the once- ubiquitous but now vanished public urinals known as Vespasiennes).
The development of both character and appearance over more than 2,000 years are chronologically delivered by the author, a professor of history and an evident francophile. The book contains an extraordinary amount of information, provided with light-handed authority and running from such nuggets as the death in 1131 of Louis VI's son and heir when he was unhorsed by a runaway pig to a potted biography of Victor Hugo. The main body of text is periodically arrested by panels that focus on diverse aspects of the city and her history, such as shopping arcades, Josephine Baker and the catacombs. In truth, this is more than just a biography - it's also an alternative guidebook, although readers intending to treat it as such would be wise to wait until the less bulky paperback edition is published.
Robert O'Byrne is a writer. His latest book, Mind Your Manners: A Guide to Good Behaviour, is published by Sitric
Paris: Biography of a City By Colin Jones Allen Lane, 643pp. £20