the Champs-Elyses
Along the first 2,500 feet (800 metres) of the Champs-Elys?es, between Concorde and the Rond-Point des Champs-Elys?es, little has changed since the childhood of Marcel Proust. The 230-foot-wide avenue is bordered with chestnut trees, behind which on both sides are gardens, usually full of children, often with their nannies. Rides on donkeyback and in goat-drawn carts are still offered. Punch still punches Judy. The discreet pavilions in the gardens are tearooms, restaurants, and theatres. Along the paths it is still possible to get ones shoes dusty on the way to the office.
From the Rond Point up to the Arch of Triumph just about everything has changed, and continues to change, along the Champs-Elys?es. Under the Second Empire this was a street of luxurious town houses. Then came the Caf?s, night-clubs, luxury shops, and the cinemas, but the street retained its feeling of luxury and the tree-shaded sidewalks (wide as a normal street) offered promenades that were the pride of Paris. Since the 1950s, however, more buildings designated as corporate headquarters have evicted shops, tearooms, and hairdressers alike.

At the top of the Champs-Elys?es is a circle 450 feet in diameter from which 12 imposing avenues radiate to from a star (?toile). From 1753 to 1970 it was called Place de l’Etoile, then was renamed Place Charles de Gaulle. In the center of the circle is the Arch of Triumph, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806. After
Napoleons fall it stood unfinished until Louis-Philippe saw to its completion in 1832-36. At 50 metres, it is twice as high as the Arch of Constantine, which inspired it, and, at 45 metres, a little more than twice as wide. Jean Chalgrin was the architect and Fran?ois Rude sculpted the frieze and the spirited group. La Marseilleise (real title, The departure of 1792). On Armistice Day in 1920, the Unknown Soldier was buried under the centre of the arch, and each evening the flame of remembrance is rekindled by a different patriotic group.
The westward thrust of the city was dramatically demonstrated in the 1970s when the biggest concentration of tall buildings in the nation arose over two miles beyond the Arch, on the far side of the rich little suburban wedge of Neuilly. The site, called Quartier de la D?fense, was formerly just a place in the road where the depressed suburban municipalities of Puteaux, Courbevoie, and Nanterre listlessly touched. Now, 30 office towers, 30 stories tall, heated and air conditioned from a central plant, are the hub of a complex, balanced city plan.
The ground level between the buildings is a raised platform reserved to pedestrians, with roads and parking below, shops, restaurants, caf?s, a shopping centre, hotels and apartment houses. Before the project was begun, the state had already constructed at La D?fense its Centre National des Industries et des Techniques, an exhibition hall with 90,000 square metres of floor space. Nanterre became the site of a campus of the University of Paris in the 1960s, and in the 1970s specialized schools of university level were installed in the new centre: a National School of Architecture, the National School of Decorative Arts, the National Conservatory of Music, and the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies.

the Place du Palais-Royal
the Place du Palais-Royal leads to the palace of Cardinal de Richelieu, built in 1624 and willed to the royal family. Louis XIV lived there as a child, and during the minority of Louis XV the kingdom was ruled from there by the debauched but gifted regent. Late in the 18th century Louis-Philippe d’Orl?ans, who became Philippe-Egalite after the Revolution, undertook extensive building around the palace garden. It was a commercial operation, and the prince hoped to pay its debts from the property rents. “Well cousin,” said Louis XVI, “so you’re going to keep shop; well never get to see you except on Sunday.”

The princes financial success was modest, but the social impact was sensational. From the 1780s to 1837 the Palais Royal was the local synonym for excitement. It was the centre of Parisian political and amorous intrigue and the site of the most celebrated gambling dens and popular caf?s. Today the garden and its galleries are still beautiful but are wistfully deliquescent, a Pompeii where even the tourists are rare.
Just behind the garden is the Biblioth?que Nationale, the national library of deposit, with the expected enormous collections of books and prints, some 6,000,000 of each.
When Haussmann greatly enlarged the Place du Palais Royal in 1852, he did not molest the palace when he pushed through the Avenue de l’Op?ra. At the top of the new street, where the Grands Boulevards crossed an enormous new place, the new Opera House was built, pulling pleasure seekers further away from the Palais garden. The Op?ra (1825-98), the neo-Baroque masterwork of Charles Garnier, is a splendiferous monument to the Second Empire. By acreage it is the largest theatre in the world, but so much space is devoted to such embellishments as the Grand Staircase that in seating capacity it is not the largest theatre in Paris. Just behind the Opera House, the largest department store indulge in the same kind of uninhibited monumentality, the sort of thing they now avoid in their branches at suburban shopping centres springing up around the country.
On the rue de Rivoli the next place is the Place des Pyramides. The gilded equestrian statue of Joan of Arc stands not far from where she was wounded (at the Saint-Honor? Gate) in her unsuccessful attack on British-held Paris, September 8, 1429.
Farther along toward the Place de la Concorde the rue de Castiglione leads to the Place Vend?me, an elegant octagonal place, little changed from the 1698 designs of Jules Hardouin- Mansart. In the centre, the Trajanesque Vend?me Column, 44 metres high and spiralled in the bronze of 1,200 captures cannons, bears the effigy of Napoleon, who had it erected in 1810. It was pulled down during the Commune and put back up by the Third Republic. The place and the gas-lit rue de la Paix have lost none of their discreet distinction, nor have their shops. The rue de Rivoli shops, once equally chic, have in many cases acquired a disguised but unmistakably vulgar accent. The streets hotels maintain their traditional high quality. The German commander of Gross Paris, Dietrich von Choltitz, who disobeyed Hitler’s order to burn the city, was captured in his headquarters at the Meurisse H?tel August 25, 1944.