Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806, after his victory at Austerlitz, to honor the French army, and was designed by architect Jean Chalgrin in a monumental neoclassical style modeled on Roman triumphal arches such as the Arch of Titus, though built at nearly triple that scale, standing 50 meters tall. Construction stalled repeatedly through political upheaval and was not completed until 1836, under King Louis-Philippe, sixteen years after Napoleon's death; his funeral cortège nonetheless passed symbolically beneath it in 1840 when his remains were returned to Paris. The monument's exterior carries four large relief sculptures, including François Rude's La Marseillaise (Le Départ des Volontaires de 1792), and the names of hundreds of generals and dozens of battles from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars inscribed on its inner and outer walls. In 1920, the Tombeau du Soldat Inconnu (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) from the First World War was placed beneath the arch, and its eternal flame, first lit in 1923, has been rekindled every evening since without interruption, including during the German occupation of Paris. The arch sits at the center of Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly Place de l'Étoile, the hub where twelve avenues converge, a layout largely shaped by Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the 1850s–60s. Visitors reach the monument via an underground pedestrian tunnel rather than crossing the roundabout at street level, then climb 284 steps, or take a lift partway, to an observation platform beneath the roofline offering views down the Champs-Élysées to the Louvre and, in the other direction, toward La Défense.