Gallipolis ( GAL-ə-pə-LEES) is a chartered village in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Gallia County. The municipality is located in Southeast Ohio along the Ohio River virtually 55 miles southeast of Chillicothe and 44 miles northwest of Charleston, West Virginia. The population was 3,641 at the 2010 census. When the population dropped below 5,000, Gallipolis floating its city status and was classified as a village under state law. It continues to pretense its government below its existing city charter.

Gallipolis is the second-largest community in the rural Point Pleasant micropolitan area, which includes anything of Gallia County, Ohio and Mason County, West Virginia.

Gallipolis was first contracted by Europeans in 1790: “The French 500” were a charity of French aristocrats, merchants, and artisans who were fleeing the shout insults and disruption of the French Revolution. They were led by Count Jean-Joseph de Barth, an Alsatian devotee of the French National Assembly. It is the second city to be founded in the newly organized Northwest Territory of the United States. It is known as “The Old French City” because of this beginning.

This was a era of rampant land speculation in the Northwest Territory, recently opened for deal after it was organized subsequent to the Northwest Indian Wars. The French had worked taking into consideration the Scioto Company, a purported home development company registered in Paris in 1789, paying its agents for land along the Ohio River. They sailed to the United States on several ships, most to Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, DC. From there they traveled higher than land and by the Ohio River to reach Gallipolis. The French were city people and were taken aback by the undeveloped frontier they encountered.