Arc de Triomphe: Napoleon's Arch and the Unknown Soldier
Why is it significant?
From the pavement at the top of the Champs-Élysées, look at the arch towering over the most chaotic roundabout in Europe, where cars from twelve avenues swirl around it with no lanes at all. Use the underground passage to cross, never the road... and come and stand beneath it.
Key Facts
| Place | Arc de Triomphe: Napoleon's Arch and the Unknown Soldier |
|---|---|
| Address | Place Charles de Gaulle, 75008 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.87380, 2.29500 |
| Part of Walk | Triumph and Guillotine: The Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to Concorde, Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
From the pavement at the top of the Champs-Élysées, look at the arch towering over the most chaotic roundabout in Europe, where cars from twelve avenues swirl around it with no lanes at all. Use the underground passage to cross, never the road... and come and stand beneath it.
Napoleon ordered this arch in 1806, after his victory at Austerlitz, and promised his soldiers they would come home beneath triumphal arches. It was a promise he could not keep. When he married Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810, the arch was barely above its foundations, so a full-size mock-up of wood and painted canvas was put up for the wedding procession. The real one was only finished in 1836, under King Louis-Philippe, long after Napoleon had died in exile.
He did pass beneath it in the end. In December 1840 his remains, brought back from Saint Helena, were carried under the arch on their way to the Invalides, before a huge, frozen crowd. In 1885 Victor Hugo's coffin lay in state here overnight, under a veil of black. And in 1919, a pilot named Charles Godefroy flew a biplane straight through the arch, a stunt nobody has dared to repeat.
Now look down at the floor. Under the vault lies the Unknown Soldier, a French soldier of the First World War whose name will never be known, buried here in January 1921. Since November 1923 a flame has burned over his tomb, and every single evening, without exception, veterans' associations come to rekindle it. It was rekindled even during the German occupation.
Look up at the great sculpted group facing the avenue, the Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 by François Rude, known to everyone as La Marseillaise, with a winged figure screaming above the soldiers. The twelve avenues around you were laid out as a star under the Second Empire, which is why Parisians still call this place l'Étoile. Now walk down the avenue, on the right-hand pavement, towards the red awnings on the corner of the Avenue George V.