The Arc de Triomphe is a cathedral with no roof
And other stuff no one tells you about Paris, part 3
While the rest of the family was taking a day in the hotel room, I went off to see more things. A major stop: The Arc de Triomphe.
The Arc is the non-proverbial center of Paris. This is on purpose. Back in the mid-1800s, Napoleon III and his buddy Georges-Eugène Haussmann got together and decided to upgrade the city. They bulldozed a lot of things, widened streets, and planned the iconic shape of Paris you see now: a “star” design, where all the major streets emanate from a single point. That point is the Arc de Triomphe.
Thus, it has great symbolic meaning in that sense. In another more direct sense, it’s a monument to France’s military victories. That’s why the photographs you’ve seen of the Nazis stomping through it as they took Paris have such a… such a... Je ne sais quoi.
The Arc was a fairly short walk from our hotel. It looms large down all the streets that connect to it. You can see it growing, like a mountain, the closer you walk to it. When you do finally reach the beast…wow. It’s…big.
I mean, of course it’s big, but I mean it’s big big. It’s basically the size of the interior of a great cathedral, except this one is a monument to man instead of god (instead joke here about cathedrals and man’s glory), and it lacks…an exoskeleton, for lack of a better term.
Basically, take away the spires and gargoyles from a giant European church, and you more or less have the Arc.
At first, it feels impossible to get to it though, because it’s surrounded by the World’s Largest Traffic Circle. Like an asphalt moat. But instead of sprinting, stopping, and stumbling across the road like a deadly game of Frogger, you’re supposed to take the stairs down from the sidewalk, a la the metro, and get to the Arc from below.
I did not expect to have to get a ticket. Sigh. Another queue. Always queuing ‘round these parts.
You don’t need a ticket to go up to the Arc, but you do need a ticket to go up inside of it and to reach the top. I don’t know why I didn’t know that was a thing. I kind of assumed you just…looked up at it. Nope! It’s a whole adventure.
Also, there are steps. Many, many steps. After that, there are more steps. And a few more after that.
Along the way, you can stop and check out the small museum inside. It’s simple but engaging. There are some sculptures, and lots of placards and graphics printed on the walls, telling the art and history of the Arc.
Once you climb to the top, you’re rewarded with stunning views. The Eiffel Tower’s second story is taller, I think, but bear in mind that the Arc is the middle of the “star” of major Parisian streets, so you can see straight down all of them.
The symmetry is striking, and you may find yourself doing the Center Of The Street Shuffle up there on top, where you elbow your way into a spot to get a straight-on shot of the Champs-Élysées only to realize you’re a foot off, and so you nudge your way to the right a little, and you’re still a foot off, and you do that several more times before deciding that the shot is good enough and you take it already.
You will probably get the idea to create a ginormous photographic panorama of the entire city by doing a panorama at each of the four corners of the Arc and then knitting them together later in Photoshop, but you probably won’t ever get around to doing that.
Also, you will probably not get tired of this view before you run out of time to hang out up there, and also also, you will probably linger for a while to rest before you have to descend all those stairs. But like a proud, victorious French soldier returning home from battle, you will muster your strength and triumphantly stomp down each one, with your nose held high.
This piece is part of a series of pieces around our recent trip to Paris. There’s more to come, but you can catch up to where we are so far by reading these. In chronological order: