Walk the Champs-Élysées,
your way.

The Champs-Élysées is the world's most famous example of urban planning as political theatre. The avenue exists because someone, four hundred years ago, decided that the experience of walking east-west across the city should also be the experience of seeing yourself - or your king, or your republic - reflected in marble, water and stone. Everything since has been built around that decision. The Tuileries, the Concorde, the Arc, the Étoile, the modern Grande Arche of La Défense ten kilometres west - all sit on the same imaginary straight line, and the line is the point.

From swampland to royal axis

In 1616 Marie de' Medici - Henri IV's widow, the same Marie who built the Luxembourg palace and gardens on the Left Bank - ordered a tree-lined promenade west of the Tuileries, the Cours-la-Reine, along the Seine. It was a place for the queen to ride and be seen. In 1667 Louis XIV's gardener André Le Nôtre, fresh from designing Versailles, extended the perspective west across the open fields beyond. The hill where the Arc de Triomphe now stands was called the Butte Chaillot. The road across the fields was called the avenue des Champs-Élysées - the "Elysian Fields", after the paradise of Greek mythology.

For a hundred and fifty years it was a quiet bridle path. Buildings began to appear in the 18th century. The hôtel d'Évreux (now the Élysée Palace) was built in 1722. The Place de la Concorde (then the Place Louis XV) was finished in 1772 - Gabriel's vast geometric square framing the eastern end of the new avenue. The Revolution came; the Place was renamed Place de la Révolution; the guillotine was set up in the middle of it; Louis XVI was beheaded here on 21 January 1793. Over the next year and a half 1,343 others followed - including, in October 1793, Marie Antoinette, and ten months later Robespierre himself.

Napoleon's arch

In 1806 Napoleon ordered an arc de triomphe at the Étoile - a monument to the victories of the Grande Armée, modelled on the Roman arches he had admired in Italy. Construction began in 1806; the architect was Jean-Chalgrin; the budget was vast and the war years were not kind to it. The arch was still unfinished when Napoleon fell in 1815. It was finished by Louis-Philippe in 1836 - 50 metres tall, 45 wide, the largest triumphal arch ever built. Napoleon's funeral procession passed under it in 1840 (his body returned from Saint Helena), as did Victor Hugo's in 1885, the Allied liberation parade in 1944, and every Bastille Day parade since 1880.

Under the arch since 1920 has been the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - one anonymous French soldier of WWI - and the eternal flame, relit every evening at 18:30 by veterans' associations. The 12 names cut into the inner walls list Napoleon's victorious battles; the bas-reliefs at the base ("La Marseillaise" by François Rude, on the right-hand pillar facing the Champs) are some of the most-photographed sculptures in France.

Haussmann's Étoile

The twelve-avenue star around the Arc - Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly Place de l'Étoile, "Star Square" - was Baron Haussmann's design from 1854, part of his radical reorganisation of Paris for Napoleon III. Before Haussmann the Étoile had five irregular roads converging on it; he ordered twelve, perfectly spaced 30° apart, each named for a Napoleonic marshal or battle. The twelve "hôtels Haussmann" around the perimeter follow the same uniform 1857 façade design - look up and you'll see they are continuous, despite belonging to different buildings.

1900: the world fair that left two palaces and a bridge

The 1900 Exposition Universelle was Paris's third world fair (the previous one, in 1889, gave the city the Eiffel Tower). The 1900 expo left three monuments still around the Champs: the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, and the Pont Alexandre III. The Grand Palais was the centrepiece - a vast glass-and-iron hall under a 45-metre dome, big enough to host horse shows, art fairs, fencing finals (it was an Olympic venue in both 1900 and 2024), and the legendary Hermès equestrian event. Closed for renovation 2021-2024 - reopened ahead of Paris 2024.

The Petit Palais opposite is the city's fine arts museum, permanently free. The Pont Alexandre III - named for the Russian Tsar, in a moment of Franco-Russian alliance - is the most ornate bridge in Paris: four 17-metre gilded Pegasus statues on the four corners, lamps in the form of mermaids and cherubs, a single 107-metre steel arch that's so flat the bridge doesn't interrupt the river-vista from either bank. Walking across it at sunset, with the Invalides dome ahead and the Eiffel Tower to your right, is one of the most photographed three-minute walks in the world.

From luxury avenue to chain street and back

The Champs was the address from 1900 to about 1980 - Cartier, Guerlain, the Lido cabaret, the embassies, the cafés. By the 1990s, rents had pushed out most of the small boutiques and global chains had moved in - Zara, H&M, Sephora, Disney, Foot Locker. Luxury moved to Avenue Montaigne and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. In the 2020s a backlash began: the city decided to rebrand the avenue, planted hundreds of new trees, expanded the pedestrian zones, hosted free open-air picnics. The Galeries Lafayette opened a Champs-Élysées branch in 2019 in the former Virgin Megastore building. Louis Vuitton's flagship at #101 reopened after renovation. The avenue is becoming, slowly, an address again.