Alexandria is a city in Louisiana and the parish seat of Rapides Parish. It lies on the south bank of the Red River in almost the exact geographic center of the state. It is the principal city of the Alexandria metropolitan area (population 147,000) which encompasses all of Rapides and Grant Parishes. The 2006 population estimate for the city of Alexandria was 45,836.

The area of Alexandria, located along the Red River, was originally home to a community supporting activities of the adjacent Spanish outpost of Post du Rapides. The area developed as a vibrant, yet sometimes debaucherous, assemblage of traders and merchants in the agricultural lands bordering the mostly unsettled areas to the north, and providing a link to from the south to the El Camino Real and then larger settlement of Natchitoches. Alexander Fulton, a Pennsylvania businessman, received a land grant from Spain in 1785, and the first organized settlement was made at that time. In 1805, Fulton and business partner Thomas Harris Maddox laid out the town plan and named the town after Fulton's infant daughter who died around that time. It was first incorporated as a town in 1818 and received a city charter in 1882.