European Adventure Recap - Arc de Triomphe

Saturday October 24, 2009

Paris, France

Our last stop of the night was the Arc de Triomphe (pronounced something like "ark dey tree-umph"...except with some phlegm/hacking in the process of saying it).  Jean Chalgrin designed it in 1806.  The Arc is 162 feet tall and 150 feet wide (just under half a football field tall and wide) with a depth of 72 feet.  It is "so colossal that...in 1919...Charles Godefroy flew his...biplane through it." 

The Arc sits in a roundabout just north of (and across the Seine River from) the Eiffel Tower.  Twelve different streets spill traffic into this roundabout.  The intersection where the Arc sits was originally called "Place de l'Étoile" meaning "Place of the Star" because all the roads came together there resembling a star.  But in 1970, the intersection was renamed "Place Charles de Gaulle" in honor of the late French President.

The traffic that goes around the Arc is absolutely crazy!  Here's a bus whizzing by - you have to be insane to try and cross this street.  It would be like your own real-life game of Frogger!

Here's another shot of the traffic in the roundabout....these people DO NOT slow down!

Of course we had to get a self-portrait too!

The safe way to get over to the Arc is to use the under-ground tunnel.

Once we were standing right next to it, we realized just how big the Arc is.  

If you click on the picture below, it will enlarge so you can see Shannon at the bottom!  She stands about 5'-3" so you can see how crazy big the Arc is.....and this picture doesn't even show the top!  (I love her face in the pic!)

Can you spot Shannon's shadow in this picture?  She's standing with her arms raised and waving.  There was a big light shinning on the Arc....so we had some fun with it.

The level of detail on all the buildings and monuments never ceased to amaze me.  To think of how people so long ago were able to accomplish building these massive structures is beyond me (and to think they did it without all our modern regulations, codes and OSHA!)

There are "four sculptural groups at the base of the Arc...'The Triumph of 1810 '...'Resistance'...'Peace'...and the most renowned of them all, 'Departure of the Volunteers of 1792' commonly called 'La Marseillaise'."  We photographed two of these sculptural groups (pictured below), but I'm honestly not sure which two they are.