About 36,000 people demonstrated on Saturday, leaving French President Emanuel Macron searching for ways to defuse tensions. Around France, the protests have left three dead , more than 260 wounded, and more than 400 arrested.
The protests began as a demonstration against rising gas prices but have evolved into a broader anti-government movement.
While Saturday's protest by the "Yellow Vest" movement had a smaller turnout than those before it, the protests were the most destructive, filling Paris' famous streets and monuments streets with riot police officers and tear gas.
The prefect of Paris, Michel Delpuech, told reporters late Sunday that the police had been faced with "extreme and unprecedented violence" and that protesters had thrown hammers and steel ball bearings at them.
Scroll down to see what the protests, and their aftermath, looked like.
The "Yellow Vest" protest movement is made up largely of people who are angry about rising fuel taxes and wider inequality in France.
REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Saturdays protests took over central Paris. Here, demonstrators are pictured at the Place de lEtoile.
REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Riot police officers were dispatched to the protests.
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Protesters lit fires near the Arc de Triomphe.
AP Photo/Thibault Camus
Macron met with firefighters on Sunday and visited damaged buildings in the city.
A woman was wounded by a water canon as protesters clashed with the police.
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Teargas surrounded protesters as they demonstrated.
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Graffiti saying "the yellow vests will triumph" and disparaging the French president was scrawled on monuments like the Arc de Triomphe.
REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Cleanup operations were underway on Sunday.
Protesters and the police faced off on Paris streets.
REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Firefighters worked to extinguish flaming cars in the center of the city.
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Macron has asked the prime minister and the main political parties to meet with Yellow Vest representatives in an effort to defuse the situation.
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
Source: CNN .
Those surveying the damage on Sunday found that the protests left burned cars and smashed stores in several of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Paris.
AP Photo/Thibault Camus
The streets were left lined with vandalized and torched cars.
REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Businesses, like this restaurant, were heavily damaged.
REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
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