History
A short history of the Arc de Triomphe
Ordered by Napoleon in 1806, finished thirty years later, and a stage for French public life ever since.
Check tours on Viator ↗Commissioned after a victory, finished after a fall
Napoleon ordered the arch in 1806, soon after his victory at Austerlitz, at the Place de l'Étoile on the edge of Paris. Architect Jean-François Chalgrin took the Arch of Titus in Rome as his inspiration, at a far larger scale. Construction stalled with Napoleon's fall in 1814 and was halted under the Bourbon Restoration until 1823; the arch was completed under Louis-Philippe and inaugurated on 29 July 1836.
A state symbol before it held anyone's remains
Napoleon's remains passed beneath the arch on 15 December 1840, on their way to Les Invalides, nineteen years after his death. Victor Hugo's body lay in vigil beneath it on the night of 31 May 1885, before his burial in the Panthéon the next day.
The Tomb and the flame
An unidentified French soldier from the First World War was brought beneath the arch on 11 November 1920 and buried there on 28 January 1921, as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On 11 November 1923 a flame was lit above the tomb, and veterans have rekindled it every evening since.
From Liberation to Christo
On 26 August 1944, Charles de Gaulle led the Liberation procession down the Champs-Élysées from the arch, the day after Paris was freed. The annual 14 July military parade still starts at the arch, and in 2021 it was wrapped in silver-blue fabric for about two weeks, a posthumous realisation of a project Christo and Jeanne-Claude had planned since the early 1960s.