If you’ve already spent a few days in Paris and feel like a change of scenery, somewhere with no history, no churches, no ancient art and no stories of kings, but with striking modern architecture and a different take on 21st-century Paris, I invite you on a half-day excursion to the La Défense district.
This is Paris’s Manhattan, on the western edge of the city near the 17th arrondissement and the Bois de Boulogne, home to the largest business district of skyscrapers in Europe. The area has been called one of the most ambitious urban planning projects in the world: a world of tomorrow’s architecture and business.
The office towers, 40 stories and higher, are radically different from the old buildings of classic Paris. You’re actually walking on a massive pedestrian esplanade, beneath which run the roads, parking garages and rail lines. The place has also been described as a giant “concrete stage” built over the main highway. The district also serves, of course, as an accessible and convenient residential neighborhood.
Construction began here in the 1960s in an ultra-modern style. The district’s historic name dates back to the war of 1870, when French troops defended the area fiercely against Prussian attacks. Today, close to 200,000 people work here, many of them employed by the largest companies in France, which have their offices in the district.
You can reach the district by metro line 1 and/or RER line A, getting off at the LA DEFENSE GRANDE ARCHE station.
The Grande Arche
Rising above everything is a giant hollow white cube made of white marble and glass: the Grande Arche (the Great Arch), from whose top you get a breathtaking view of the city from a height of 110 meters. The arch’s inner dimensions are symbolic: 100 meters by 100 meters, exactly like the Cour Carrée of the Louvre Museum. The stretched canvas inside the arch’s enormous opening represents a large cloud.
The arch has 4,000 windows and 35 floors. To give you a sense of its size: if it were just 6 meters taller and wider, it could hold the entire Notre-Dame Cathedral inside it. Another version of the claim says it could already fit the cathedral as it is.
The arch was designed by the Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, built in the 1980s, and inaugurated in 1989 to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It became a symbol of President François Mitterrand’s vision of progress for the 1980s.
The shape of the arch represents an open window to the world. It houses government offices, companies and private offices. In under a minute, you can take one of four glass elevators up to a wonderful panoramic viewpoint on the roof of the building. Every year, press photography exhibitions are held on the rooftop terrace. But you don’t have to go all the way up: even from partway up the arch’s stairs, you can see the royal axis of Paris, which runs in a straight line to the Arc de Triomphe, through the Champs-Élysées, Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries Garden, and ends at the small Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the nearby Louvre building.
The La Défense shopping mall
At the foot of the skyscrapers beside the Grande Arche stands the giant “Les Quatre Temps” shopping mall, the largest in Paris, with over 300 stores. The mall, which opened in 1981, has several floors of clothing stores, electronics, restaurants, cafés, movie theaters and boutiques.
The Quatre Temps mall is an excellent spot if you’re looking to shop. It really has everything, including a huge supermarket called Auchan spread over two floors: groceries on the first, and on the second a large department with toys, shoes, sporting goods, books, clothes, computers, phones, bags and much more, all at relatively low prices. Most of the big international chains are also represented here, including a large two-floor store from C&A with fairly cheap prices.
During the lunch break for the district’s workers, the place gets quite crowded, especially at the mall’s restaurants, which serve thousands of employees at the same time.
The CNIT center
The CNIT center, the “Centre for New Industries and Technologies,” also known as the Palais de la Défense, is a uniquely shaped building resembling an inverted seashell. It also serves as another shopping center, with several luxury stores and a large branch of the FNAC chain. This was the first building constructed in La Défense, opening back in 1958. It stands out for its sheer size and bold, distinctive architecture. Over the years it has gone through several major renovations. The structure rests on just three support points, connected to each other underground.
The esplanade
Between the LA DEFENSE and ESPLANADE DE LA DEFENSE metro stations, you’ll find the colorful esplanade named for General de Gaulle, lined with a variety of modern sculptures, some of them by famous artists such as César, Joan Miró, Raymond Moretti, Alexander Calder, and the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam (born 1928), whose work here is a vibrant fountain combining color and water in a modern style.
The esplanade continues the historic axis that stretches from the Louvre Museum all the way to the Grande Arche in La Défense. As you walk along it, among the giant towers, some of them clad in glass of different colors that reflect the surroundings beautifully, you can spot dozens of them. The towers house the offices of close to 1,000 companies, some of them among the leading names in the French and global markets.
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