La Défense- Paris, France - VirtualTourist.com

This is of course the building you cannot miss in La Défense! Coming from the lower metro station you have it in Front of you, 500 m away, and you walk to it looking around at statues, buildings, perspectives, and slowly approach, approach and notice how it grows in the sky.
This hollow cube has been designed by Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen and structural engineer Erik Reitzel, who won the tender emitted by French government, under President Mitterand; the purpose was to extend the “historical axis” of Paris, going on one straight line from Louvre Palace to the Concorde Obelisk, the Champs Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe, and now very far, the Head of Defense. The Grande Arche has been inaugurated in July 1989, bicentennial of the French Revolution.
The website below gives lots of information (tabs are in French!) about the building, technical details, and more little stories, like the fact Notre Dame Cathedral could fit in the hollow of the cube.
Nice is to make a visit on the roof from where you can have a great view over Paris and the western suburbs, using the fast panoramic lifts. There are three ways to get up, in fact:
1) pay the fare for the lift: 10 Euros, and you can go to the roof museum and go on the roof.
2) Make a reservation at the roof restaurant “ô 110”, and you can use the lift free. The menu of the restaurant looks good, but expensive.
3) Tell the lift attendant you made a reservation at the restaurant with a big smile. . . use the lift free, and don’t go to the restaurant. . . . . :) I had no problem last time (Sept 2008, bad weather day), with another VT-er, but there may be checks upstairs. . . . take risk. . . . . :)))

I like this big cube with simple and perfect shapes, at day or night, from far or from close. . . . . This monument, hosting mainly government offices has character.
During day time there are lots of ways to look at the Grande Arche, like for example from the Agam Fountain (picture 1), see it from under Calder’s Spider (picture 2), or in Spring with Cherry blossoms (picture 3). I love it a lot at night, lit by bright lights, and hidden behind the water plays of the Agam fountain, in rhythm with classical music (picture 4), or when it appears so brightly in the dark blue sky (picture 5), displaying a sort of a crystalline shape. . . .

La Défense, Paris

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La Défense, Paris

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