Day 4--Arc de Triomphe



We needed several hours to recover from our half day at Versailles, but before we completely wasted the remainder of the day we finally got to it again while the sun was still up and ventured out to the very famous Arc de Triomphe.

The Arch itself is bigger then I expected, just like everything else of note in Paris, and it stands in the middle of the craziest traffic intersection I have ever seen. When we arrived it was rush hour (or what we would call rush hour in the U.S.) and it was packed with cars. The arch is in the middle of a great big round-a-bout with no lane markers and twelve streets running into it. There is not a single traffic light that I could find, but they may have been there, who knows? We viewed the arch from across the street for a while, but almost just as facsinating was watching all the cars trying to navigate the nutty intersection. We saw several near accidents and if we had watched longer I'm sure there would have been one, it was rather entertaining.

To get to the arch itself in the center of the intersection they kindly don't expect you to cross the street...that would have been crazy! There is an underground access tunnel so that pedestrians can get over there safely. We walked over to get a better look. I was immediately struck by the detail of the carvings on the underside of the arch which you can see here.

There are four large statue scenes carved right into the side of the Arc de Triomphe, two in front and two in back. Here is the one from the front left side. I believe the center figure is Napoleon, but I'm not sure. I do know that Napoleon commissioned the construction of the Arc do Triomphe, but it was not completed until a while after his death.

Here is the statue scene from the front right side depicting some sort of battle scene. The one guy in the front is completely naked and I have a hard believing he would have really gone into battle that way, but you never know.

Right under the arch there is the WWI French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There is a flame burning in the upper section and it was really neat to look at.

Here is another statue scene from the back right side. I like the horse in this particular scene. Much of one side of the arch was being renovated, but these statues were not covered up which was really nice.

Back side left statue scene. It was hard to get a good shot of this particular scene because much of the sidewalk area below was blocked off for renovation equipment.



From the Arc de Triomphe you can see the top half of the Eiffel Tower over the top of some buildings. Also, if you look straight down the Champs Elysees from there, you can see the Place de la Concorde. I tried to take a picture of this, but you can't really see it well enough so it wasn't worth posting here, but the Place de la Concorde was our next destination after a stroll down the Champs Elysees.