La Grande Arche de la Défense (; "The Great Arch of the Defense"), originally called La Grande Arche de la Fraternité (; "Fraternity"), is a

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical ...

and building in the business district of

La Défense La Défense () is a major business district in France's Paris metropolitan area, west of the city limits. It is located in Île-de-France region's Departments of France, department of Hauts-de-Seine in the Communes of France, communes of Courbe ...

and in the commune of

Puteaux Puteaux () is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located in the heart of the Hauts-de-Seine department, from the centre of Paris. La Défense, Paris's business district hosting the tallest buildings in the metropolitan ...

, to the west of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France. It is usually known as the Arche de la Défense or simply as La Grande Arche. A cube, La Grande Arche is part of the perspective from the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

Arc de Triomphe The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, often called simply the Arc de Triomphe, is one of the most famous monuments in Paris, France, standing at the western end of the Champs-Élysées at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly named Plac ...

, and was one of the

Grands Projets of François Mitterrand The Grands Projets of François Mitterrand (variants: Grands Travaux or Grands Projets Culturels ; officially: Grandes Opérations d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme ) was an architectural programme to provide modern monuments in Paris, the city of mo ...

. The distance from La Grande Arche to Arc de Triomphe is .

Design and construction

A great national

design competition A design competition or design contest is a competition in which an entity solicits design proposals from the public for a specified purpose. Architecture An architectural design competition solicits architects to submit design proposals for a b ...

was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president

François Mitterrand François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was a French politician and statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest holder of that position in the history of France. As a former First ...

. Danish architect

Johan Otto von Spreckelsen Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (4 May 1929 – 16 March 1987) was a Danish architect, best known for designing the Grande Arche of La Défense in Puteaux, near Paris. He directed the creation of several modern churches in Denmark. Life He was born ...

(1929–1987) and Danish engineer

Erik Reitzel Erik Reitzel (10 May 1941 – 6 February 2012) was a Danish civil engineer who started work in 1964 and was for many years a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Technical University of Denmark, in the disciplines of bearing s ...

(1941–2012) designed the winning entry to be a late-20th-century version of the

: a monument to humanity and

humanitarian Humanitarianism is an ideology centered on the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotiona ...

ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985, with most of the work being carried out by

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

civil engineering company

Bouygues Bouygues S.A. () is a French engineering group headquartered in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. Bouygues is listed on the Euronext, Euronext Paris exchange and is a blue chip (stock market), blue chip in the ...

. Spreckelsen resigned in July 1986 and ratified the transfer of all his architectural responsibilities to his associate, French architect

Paul Andreu Paul Andreu (10 July 1938 – 11 October 2018) was a French architect, known for his designs of multiple airports such as Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and multiple prestigious projects in China, including the National Centre for the Per ...

. Reitzel continued his work until the monument was completed in 1989. The Grande Arche is in the approximate shape of a cube with a width, height, and depth of ; it has been suggested that the structure looks like a

hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square ( ) and a cube ( ); the special case for is known as a ''tesseract''. It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1- skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel l ...

tesseract In geometry, a tesseract or 4-cube is a four-dimensional hypercube, analogous to a two-dimensional square and a three-dimensional cube. Just as the perimeter of the square consists of four edges and the surface of the cube consists of six ...

) projected onto the three-dimensional world. It has a

prestressed concrete Prestressed concrete is a form of concrete used in construction. It is substantially prestressed (Compression (physics), compressed) during production, in a manner that strengthens it against tensile forces which will exist when in service. Post-t ...

frame covered with

glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...

and is covered in Bethel Granite. ''La Grande Arche'' was inaugurated in July 1989, with grand military parades that marked the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It completed the line of monuments that forms the

Axe historique The ''Axe historique'' (; "historical axis") refers to a straightly aligned series of thoroughfare streets, squares, monuments and buildings that extend from the centre of Paris, France, to the west-northwest of the city. It is also known as t ...

running through Paris. The Grande Arche is turned at an angle of 6.33° about the vertical axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical: with a

Paris Métro The Paris Métro (, , or , ), short for Métropolitain (), is a rapid transit system serving the Paris metropolitan area in France. A symbol of the city, it is known for its density within the capital's territorial limits, uniform architectur ...

station, an RER station, and a motorway all situated directly underneath the ''Arche'', the angle was the only way to accommodate the structure's giant foundations. In addition, from an architectural point of view, the turn emphasises the depth of the monument and is similar to the turn of the

at the other end of the Axe Historique. In addition, the ''Arche'' is placed so that it forms a secondary axis with the two of the highest buildings in Paris at the time, the

Tour Eiffel The Eiffel Tower ( ; ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889. Locally nicknamed "''La dame de fe ...

and the

Tour Montparnasse Tour Maine-Montparnasse (Maine-Montparnasse Tower), also commonly named Tour Montparnasse, is a office skyscraper in the Montparnasse area of Paris, France. Constructed from 1969 to 1973, it was the List of tallest buildings and structures in t ...

. The two sides of the ''Arche'' house government offices. The roof section was closed in 2010 following an accident without injury and the marble tiles which had begun to peel off were replaced with granite ones. It opened again in 2017 after seven years of renovation work. It features panoramic views of Paris and includes a restaurant and an exhibition area dedicated to photojournalism. The void contains skeletal shafts for panoramic lifts and a

PTFE Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene, and has numerous applications because it is chemically inert. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off fro ...

-and-

fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass c ...

tensile-membrane sunshade known as the "Cloud" (''Le nuage''). The Danish architect, von Spreckelsen, chose Italian

Carrara marble Carrara marble, or Luna marble (''marmor lunense'') to the Romans, is a type of white or blue-grey marble popular for use in sculpture and building decor. It has been quarried since Roman times in the mountains just outside the city of Carrara ...

for the tile cladding of the façade, for the marble's gleaming, milky white exterior. This caused structural problems, as marble is porous, rainwater got into its pores, and when the temperature froze, the ice in its pores cracked the marble, and tiles began buckling and falling down, luckily without, however, hitting, injuring or killing anyone. The monument had to be closed for a few years while French engineers (von Spreckelsen had retired from the project before it was completed and was dead by the time of the collapsing tiles) had the marble tiles removed and replaced with granite quarried in Vermont, which has proved durable, at a cost of some €200M.

Gallery

File:Arc De Triomphe from the Grande Arche.jpg, View of the Arc de Triomphe from the Grande Arche File:Christmas decoration at the Grand Arche.jpg, Christmas decoration at the Grand Arche File:GrandeArche.jpg, The ''Grande Arche'' seen from the ''Arc de Triomphe'' on the ''Axe historique'' File:North facade of the Grande Arche de la Défense - 20050906.jpg, North façade of the Grande Arche de la Défense File:Western part of La Défense as seen from the Grande Arche - 2020-07-07.jpg, Western part of La Défense as seen from the Grande Arche File:La Defense Jazz Festival 2023.jpg, The 2023 La Défense Jazz Festival takes place under the Grande Arche

Tenants

Organizations headquartered in the Grande Arche include the

Bureau d'Enquêtes sur les Événements de Mer Bureau ( ) may refer to: Agencies and organizations *Government agency *Public administration * News bureau, an office for gathering or distributing news, generally for a given geographical location * Bureau (European Parliament), the administr ...

(BEAmer), the French marine accident investigation agency; and the

French Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau The French Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau (', abbreviated BEA-TT) is an agency of the French government formed in 2004 and charged with the investigation into accidents involving all forms of land transport, including railways, urban ...

, in the southern portion.

References

External links

Grande Arche
(French and English)
Satellite image from Google Maps

(in French)
ERI.dk

Grande Arche pictures in Art Days
{{Authority control Triumphal arches in France Skyscraper office buildings in La Défense Monuments historiques of Hauts-de-Seine Tourist attractions in Paris Buildings and structures completed in 1989 Esports venues in France 1989 establishments in France

Design and construction

Gallery

Tenants

See also

References

Further reading

External links