Metropolis is a city located along the Ohio River in Massac County, Illinois, United States. It has a population of 6,537 according to the 2010 United States Census. Metropolis is the county seat of Massac County and is share of the Paducah, KY-IL Micropolitan Statistical Area in Southern Illinois.

Located on the Ohio River, the Metropolis area has been fixed by many stand-in peoples throughout history. For thousands of years, varying cultures of Native Americans populated the area. The most mysterious society was the Mississippian culture, which reached its peak on AD 1100 and built a large city at Cahokia, near the Mississippi River and present-day Collinsville, Illinois, to the north opposite St. Louis, Missouri. Its people built large earthworks and partnered structures, many of which have been preserved and protected at the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mississippian culture regional centers arose throughout the Ohio and degrade Mississippian valleys, where the rivers were ration of widespread trading routes used for quarrel with extra cultures.

In 1757, Massac County was fixed by a French expedition, which built Fort de L’Ascension for use during the French and Indian War against the British (the encounter is also known as the Seven Years’ War, which took place largely in Europe). The garrison at the fort was clever to resist a Cherokee offensive during the war. Afterward the defeated French lonesome the fort, and many moved west of the Mississippi River to flee British rule. When the victorious British colonists arrived to take control of territory ceded by the French, the Chickasaw had already destroyed the fort.

During the American Revolutionary War, the mostly ethnic French residents of the town were flattering to the rebels. Afterward in 1794, President George Washington ordered Fort Massac reconstructed, at a strategic site tall above the Ohio River. The fort was extremely damaged by the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. Rather than rebuild, the US military isolated the capacity in 1814, as its forces were needed extra west. Local settlers scavenged the timbers and left little behind of the indigenous construction materials.