Champs Elysées, Paris

Avenue de Champs-Elysees is Paris's most famous thoroughfare. This street has its beginnings in about 1667, when the landscape garden designer Andre Le Notre created this broad tree-line avenue that eventually became known as the Champs-Elysees. Champs-Elysees has witnessed some important moments in French history and nowadays it's the scene for annual military parade on Bastille Day. Also since 1975 the Tour de France ends here every year in July. Parisians tend to congregate here every time there is something to celebrate, on New Year's Eve or with the occasion of winning a soccer championship.

The avenue is 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) long, running from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. Presently Champs-Elysees - especially its upper part - is lined with expensive cafes and restaurants, as well as a multitude of chain stores and designer shops. It's a pleasant spot for a stroll.

This famous avenue links the place de la Concorde with the Arc de Triomphe and is a very pleasant 30 minute 2km walk if you choose.

The avenue is lined by shops, cafes, restaurants, fashion shops, old apartments and now has been renovated with granite sidewalks and trees.

Many famous events regularly take place on the Champs-Elysees.

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Take a stroll down the Champs Elysees and marvel at the sheer number of cinemas there are on one street! Seriously, I have never seen so many cinemas in such close proximity to each other!

There are of course bars, cafes and shops along here as well. We enjoyed the Disney store and the Renault store. The Renault store has display cars such as ones covered in orange balls or holographic material (see my photos). There are also interactive displays and games (I vaguely remember one where I had to smell things!?!)

Walk down from the Arc de Triomphe to Concorde Square, turn around and see the Arc standing proudly in the centre of a busy scene of people and cars going about their business.

Personnaly I dont really like the Champs Elysees. I think many Parisian dont see it as a magical place. It is quite noisy, crowded, and not of an oustanding beauty. There are much more pretty places in Paris than this one. When thinking about Champs Elysees, many Parisian think of a place with bored people from the suburb wandering there, tourists taking pictures and where a cup of coffee costs 5€... not exactly the idea tourists probably have about this place. I dont know what image people have from Champs Elysees, maybe of a romantic place?

But for sure, it still is probably one of the most symbolic place in Paris and in France. When there is a major victory in sport with French athletes, people show on the Champs Elysees, when we do military parades it very often goes, if not always, in Champs ELysees and the tour de France finishes in Champs Elysees... All a symbol! So, yes, it is a very important place for us, even though many French dont find it magical.

One thing I like to do when I travel is to walk in the place, try to meet locals and get the whole athmosphere of the city. Walking along the Champs Elysées was a dream come true, I just couldn't believe I was walking in one of the most beautiful avenues in the world! And of course, being in the heart of the city you will find lots of shops and cafes.
I walked it from the Arc of Thrompe to Concorde and it took me hours because I was doing many stops. Make sure to wear confortable shoes and take enough memory for lots of pictures; you'll be amazed!

This avenue is the most famouse in Paris and in the world. There are cinemas, cafes and of course luxury shops like Adidas, Benetton, Disney, Cartier and others...
The best view of this avenue is from the Arc de Triomphe.

Largely unnoticed by passersby, l'Hôtel de la Païva is a magnificent Renaissance-style palace on the most famous avenue in the world, les Champs-Elysées. It was built in 1865 by a notorious Marquise de la Païva (née Esther Lachmann). [Note: Hôtel in France also means "townhouse" or "city palace".] She was of ordinary Jewish Polish-Russian descent, but was introduced to high French society by her lover the composer Henri Herz. After many other lovers, she married the Portuguese Marquis de la Païva whose name is eternalised by this sumptuous palace he built for her. A few years later, she annulled her marriage by Rome in order to marry another lover, the super-wealthy Prussian count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. These sad events led her previous husband to commit suicide. It is said that she forbade women other than herself from entering her mansion where she held extravagant parties! After her death, the mansion was sold to the British Traveller's Club, which still occupies the palace and is apparently also exclusive to men!! The basement of the palace had been forever a foreign exchange office, but was recently turned into an elegant restaurant-lounge.

What a wonderful feeling it is to either walk down this 2km stretch of road or even driving down it with the sight seeing bus. I do not think I would like to attempt driving down here by myself, traffic is a bit bad here. The Champs-Elysees was originally laid out in the 1660’s by the landscape gardener Le Notre as a garden sweeping away from the Tuileries, not sure what happened, today it is a mecca for the designer label shops and tourists.