Arc de Triomphe

Landmark · Place de l'Étoile (8th)Paris, France

The Arc de Triomphe was ordered by Napoleon to honour his armies after Austerlitz, yet he never saw it finished — he died fifteen years before it opened. Only in 1840 did his coffin pass beneath the completed arch, carried back to Paris nineteen years after his death. Jean Chalgrin drew it after Roman triumphal gates but built it far larger, a single vault fifty metres high at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The inner walls are dense with carved names of victories, generals and campaigns, set there as a record of the era. The arch stands at the centre of a roundabout where twelve avenues meet, with traffic circling it all day. Up close, one pillar carries a huge carved panel called La Marseillaise, the work of the sculptor François Rude: a winged figure above a crowd of volunteers, driving them off to war. Beneath the vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War, its flame rekindled every evening at dusk. Climb the spiral stair to the roof and the twelve avenues run out below you in every direction, the axis going straight to the Louvre one way and the towers of La Défense the other.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The roof is the point, not the base — from the pavement you mostly read traffic; only from the terrace does the tangle below finally snap into a clean twelve-pointed star.
The pillars empty as the roof fills — most visitors head straight up, so the reliefs and inscriptions at ground level often have room to breathe even when the terrace is packed.
Twice a year the sun sets straight down the Champs-Élysées — for a few evenings in spring and late summer it drops right through the monument's line.
The roundabout obeys no lanes — twelve avenues pour into the ring with no markings and no right of way, and it is so notorious that insurers there split the blame for any collision fifty-fifty; you reach the arch by a tunnel, never a crosswalk.
The space under the vault is a war grave — voices tend to drop when people step beneath it, and it rewards a slower minute than a passing photo.

Things to do

1
Take the roof at dusk
Climb the spiral stair to the rooftop terrace and stay until the streetlights blink on and the headlights below thicken into rivers of white and red. Turn west and pick out the towers of La Défense; then turn east down the Champs-Élysées and follow the axis all the way to the far obelisk at Concorde.
2
Circle the pillars before you climb
Walk a slow lap around the four great piers before you head up. Find La Marseillaise on the Champs-Élysées face, then tilt your head back to read the battle names cut above the arches, and trace the ring of carved shields around the top where the campaign inscriptions run.
3
Stay for the evening flame
Linger past the day-trippers until nightfall, then step to the tomb beneath the vault. Stand on the side away from the traffic, let the noise fall behind you, and watch the small rekindling ceremony unfold. Keep still and quiet; by the time it begins the daytime crowd has thinned to almost nothing.