Lutetia

Like any modern city, Paris’ early inhabitants raised their own food; the Romans, who called the place Lutetia, coaxed grapes and figs from the Gallic soil.

Horses had been taking people around Paris since the Romans called it Lutetia.

Marguerite Duras’s “The War,” to relive the time when the Lutetia Hotel welcomed Holocaust survivors returning from the camps.

The descriptor comes from the Roman name for the place that would become Paris — Lutetia.

Sciolino tells us, almost incidentally, about the places that have claimed to be the source of the Seine; about the songs, movies, poems and paintings devoted to the river; about its bridges and its history in World War II; and about the origins of the names Paris, Seine and Lutetia.