Champs-Elysees and Around

From Paris Hotels Reviews

The Champs-Elysees and Around

Synonymous with glitz and glamour, the Champs-Elysees sweeps through one of the city's most exclusive districts, studded with luxury hotels and top fashion boutiques. The avenue in turn forms part of a grand, nine-kilometre axis that extends from the Louvre at the heart of the city to the Défense business district in the west. Offering impressive vistas along its length, this grand axis, often referred to as the Voie Triomphale, or Triumphal Way, incorporates some of the city's most famous landmarks – the place de la Concorde, Tuileries gardens and the Arc de Triomphe. The whole ensemble is so regular and geometrical it looks as though it might have been laid out by a single town planner rather than successive kings, emperors and presidents, all keen to add their stamp and promote French power and prestige. Last to join the list was President Mitterrand (whose grand projets for the city outdid even Napoleon's) – his glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre and immense marble-clad cubic arch at La Défense effectively marking each end of the historic axis. The two great constructions echo each other in scale and geometry, with both aligned at the same slight angle away from the axis – a detail that, given the distance involved, has to be appreciated conceptually rather than visually.