Arc de Triomphe
Napoleon commissioned the triumphal arch after the victory at Austerlitz, but it was not finished until 1836. It is 50 metres high and almost free of columns, a Roman arch enlarged to a new scale. Twelve avenues radiate from the square around it.
In 1806, after the victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon decided to build a triumphal arch for the French army. Jean-François Chalgrin designed it, and the foundation stone was laid the same year. Work stopped when Napoleon fell in 1814, and Chalgrin had already died in 1811. Work resumed in the 1820s and was completed under King Louis-Philippe, who inaugurated the arch in 1836. By then Napoleon’s era lay a couple of decades in the past, and the arch was made to honour all of France’s armies since the Revolution.
The arch is about 50 metres high and 45 metres wide, with a large central arch and smaller transverse arches on the short sides. It follows the Roman triumphal arches but has no columns, which makes it massive and clear. On the piers are four large sculpture groups, the most famous of which is François Rude’s Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, known as La Marseillaise. On the inner surfaces of the arches are the names of victories and of hundreds of generals. On the roof is a viewing terrace.
In 1921 an unknown soldier from the First World War was buried beneath the arch, and since 1923 an eternal flame has burned on the grave. The arch has been the setting for victory parades and for Napoleon’s funeral procession in 1840, Victor Hugo’s lying in state in 1885 and the Liberation in 1944. The square around the arch was called the Étoile, the star, after the twelve avenues that Baron Haussmann had radiate from it. The Arc de Triomphe has become a symbol of Paris and has been copied in many cities.