Champs-Élysées

Champs-Élysées, broad avenue in Paris, one of the world’s most famous, which stretches 1.17 miles (1.88 km) from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. It is divided into two parts by the Rond-Point (“roundabout”) des Champs-Élysées. The lower part, toward the Place de la Concorde (and beyond, the Tuileries Gardens), is surrounded by gardens, museums, theatres, and a few restaurants. The upper part, toward the Arc de Triomphe, was traditionally the site of luxury shops and hotels, restaurants and pavement cafés, theatres, banks, and offices. Progressively, however, its character has changed, although its tourist appeal remains strong. Airline offices, fast-food restaurants, car showrooms, and cinemas, as well as American-style shopping arcades, have become increasingly dominant.

When first designed in the 17th century, the Champs-Élysées consisted of fields, an open area then on the outskirts of Paris, containing the Cours de la Reine (“Queen’s Drive”), an approach road running along the Seine River to the Tuileries Palace. Later in the same century, André Le Nôtre landscaped the broad, shady avenue and extended it to the crest of the hill on which the Arc de Triomphe now stands. In the 18th century the whole came to be called the Champs-Élysées. The Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated in 1836, and by the 1860s, when Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was grandly redrawing the boulevards of Paris, the Champs-Élysées had become a prestigious thoroughfare of palaces, hotels, and restaurants.