Champs-Élysées. Just say the name and you immediately picture a glittering Parisian avenue with the headlights of thousands of cars and the Arc de Triomphe in the background. For many travelers, it’s one of the great symbols of Paris, maybe even a stand-in for the City of Light itself. There’s no doubt this avenue has become a myth that only keeps growing, thanks to the fact that it’s where the famous Bastille Day parade starts, and where the Tour de France finishes.
It’s a shame it’s partly an illusion, one that draws millions of tourists to a street whose western stretch (the part that starts around the Franklin D. Roosevelt metro station and ends at the Arc de Triomphe) is commercialized, unpleasant and, at times, not all that safe. If you don’t believe me, listen to Charles de Gaulle, who said this immortal line while serving as president of France:
The Champs-Élysées is the most beautiful avenue in the world, if you ignore the buildings on either side of it.
Let me burst (or at least crack a little) this myth called the Champs-Élysées, and I’ll do it my favorite way: through history. In this article, I’ll tell you how the avenue was born, why it became so famous, and finally, why today it’s far from its glorious past, and why its future after 2024 actually looks promising.
Before we start, let’s set the mood with a song that most of us surely know, and one that’s responsible for no small part of the avenue’s mythical status.
The Story of the Champs-Élysées
In the 17th century, the Louvre was the westernmost building in Paris, and if you crossed the Tuileries Garden, all you’d see was a wall and fields where vegetables were grown. The first person to decide to push the city’s boundaries west, toward the 8th arrondissement, was Marie de’ Medici (1575-1642).
It all started when the queen grew jealous of the palace gardens of Queen Margot, the first wife of her husband, Henri IV (r. 1589-1610). Queen Margot (full name Marguerite de Valois, 1553-1615) used the money from the divorce settlement she received from the king of France to build a stunning palace and gardens, located where the Paris School of Fine Arts stands today. To compete with these gardens, which Queen Margot had opened to the public, Marie de’ Medici built the Cour la Reine gardens along the southern edge of the Tuileries Garden.
In 1670, Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV, commissioned the famous landscape architect Le Nôtre (André Le Nôtre) to plant a tree-lined avenue that would start where the Tuileries Garden ended and finish at the Chaillot hill, where the Arc de Triomphe would later be built. Le Nôtre managed to design the eastern part of the Champs-Élysées and turned it into a beautiful garden.
The western part became a simple tree-lined avenue. In the 18th century, the avenue became a major transportation route toward the Longchamp monastery, where noblewomen liked to spend their leisure time, and as a result it also became highly fashionable. So it’s no surprise that this is when the first private mansions started going up on both sides of the avenue, mansions that, sadly, haven’t survived.
During the French Revolution, the Champs-Élysées became a favorite hangout for Parisians. The reason was that the guillotine stood for a long stretch of time in the “Place de la Révolution” (later renamed Place de la Concorde), and after watching heads roll, Parisians would head over for a glass of wine at one of the inns or restaurants that had sprung up along the avenue.
Add to that the fact that if you walked the avenue back then, you had a good chance of running into Robespierre out walking his dog, Brount, and you get a mix of leisure and celebrity-spotting (much like a busy weekend promenade today). Under Napoleon, the avenue kept growing in popularity, and in 1807 the emperor chose this spot to host a banquet for about 10,000 guests, celebrating his diplomatic victory at Tilsit.
But not everything sparkled on the Champs-Élysées in those days. Once darkness fell, all sorts of shady characters came out to hunt for prey on the dark avenue. One man who tried to solve this problem was Philippe Lebon (1767-1804), who invented gas lighting, which was then used to light up the streets at night. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t help much: he was murdered in the unlit stretch of the Champs-Élysées on December 1, 1804, right around the time Napoleon was crowned emperor.
In 1814, Napoleon lost power, and the Champs-Élysées briefly became a base for the coalition forces that occupied France and brought back Louis XVIII on the tips of their bayonets. It was actually a few decades after this low point that the avenue’s meteoric rise began, and its transformation into an urban legend.
The Glory Days of the Champs-Élysées
In 1840, the architect Hittorff (Jacques Ignace Hittorff, 1792-1867) took on the task of rebuilding the Champs-Élysées. He redesigned the avenue, installed around 1,200 gas lamps, and turned it into a symbol of the City of Light. Napoleon III continued the building momentum and asked landscape architect Adolphe Alphand (1817-1891) to turn the gardens along the Champs-Élysées into English-style gardens, like the ones he had loved so much during his exile in London. The result is the eastern stretch of the avenue that we all know today, the one that runs from Place de la Concorde to the Rond-Point.
As a result of this work, the Champs-Élysées became the number one place to go out in Paris, with theaters, circuses and cafés springing up along it. And if that weren’t enough, while children enjoyed the wooden horses on the carousel, their parents could watch real horses pulling luxury carriages carrying all the who’s who of the era. And where were all these “who’s who” headed? To Longchamp, of course! The monastery I mentioned earlier had disappeared during the French Revolution, and a horse racing track was built in its place. And so, in the 19th century, the French swapped Christianity for horse betting, enthusiastically embracing the sport that had arrived from Britain.
Let’s leave the noise of the carriages for a moment and go back to the Champs-Élysées itself. Quite a few people born in the 19th century, including famous writers, tell us in their memoirs about the wonderful childhoods they had there. For example, we learn that Marcel Proust loved playing there as a child with a girl who would go down in literary history as Gilberte, Swann’s daughter, from the book series “In Search of Lost Time.” Jean Cocteau also tells us about a happy childhood there, full of puppet theaters, candy, waffles, games and innocence.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, the children would head home, and in their place the great courtesans would arrive. Dressed in their finest, they would head out to the cafés, restaurants and theaters of the Champs-Élysées (one of which staged Offenbach’s famous opera, La Belle Hélène).
There, they would of course try to catch one of the richest men in Paris, someone who would fund their luxurious apartment and their impressive jewelry collection. Even today, you can still find a few restaurants in the gardens where these courtesans used to sit. But unlike the 19th century, when even someone with an average income could afford to eat at these restaurants, today they’re Michelin-starred establishments, where an ordinary mortal can barely set foot.
The best example of a restaurant like this is Ledoyen, where Robespierre and Napoleon used to dine before becoming the all-powerful rulers of France. Today you’ll find a 3-Michelin-star restaurant there, and to eat there you’ll need to part with about 400 euros (not including wine).
The Fall of the Champs-Élysées
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably asking yourself: where are all those theaters, mansions and other things that turned the Champs-Élysées into “a spell that cannot be compared to anything you know” (as Balzac wrote to Countess Hanska)? It’s quite simple: the Champs-Élysées fell victim to its own success.
The western part of the Champs-Élysées (the one ending at the Arc de Triomphe) became a commercial district as early as 1860, when the first shops opened there. But little by little, as the avenue’s sentimental value grew, so did the rent for those shops. As a result, small shops and boutiques were forced to make way for bigger stores. In the second half of the 20th century, this process picked up speed, and the mansions and small shops that once lined the avenue were replaced by giant chains and fast food restaurants, like McDonald’s (mon Dieu)!
I remember that as a kid and a teenager I still loved the Champs-Élysées, and no trip to Paris was complete without a visit to FNAC and Virgin, two giant stores that sold CDs, books and movies. But the internet wiped out that business, and Virgin closed years ago (a branch of Galeries Lafayette recently opened in its place).
FNAC somehow still survives, thanks to selling tickets to attractions and electronics, but it’s a pale shadow of what it was in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Instead, you’ll find car dealerships and giant chains like Sephora. Shopping lovers might enjoy that, but in my opinion, this avenue has no taste or smell left (other than car exhaust).
On top of all that, in recent years the Champs-Élysées has become a less pleasant place to be at night. True, these aren’t the cheerful days of Lebon, when you could get a knife in the back in a dark alley, but even so, once darkness falls, you can still run into some unsavory characters there. In recent years the spot also became a flashpoint for the “yellow vest” movement (especially the stretch near the Arc de Triomphe), and quite a few violent protests took place there, which didn’t exactly boost the avenue’s popularity.
Does that mean you should avoid the avenue altogether? Anne Hidalgo (born 1959), the mayor of Paris, actually has plans for you.
A Major Facelift for the Champs-Élysées
Just recently, we heard that the city of Paris is planning to turn the Champs-Élysées into a giant garden, with a massive investment of 250 million euros. According to the plan, which is set to roll out after the 2024 Olympics, traffic lanes on the Champs-Élysées will be reduced, and new paths will be added for pedestrians.
As you can see in the video below, both Place de la Concorde and Place de l’Étoile are set to become a kind of pedestrian zone, and the result will be a paradise for tourists.
Now That You Know the History of the Champs-Élysées, What’s Next?
Now that you know the story of the Champs-Élysées, it’s time to start exploring it. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do it alone, since I’ve put together a walking route that will take you through all the main sites of the Champs-Élysées and the streets around it. You’ll find it in the article Champs-Élysées: A Walking Route and Visitor Guide.
If you’re interested in staying near the Champs-Élysées, I highly recommend Udi’s apartment, located right by Place de la Concorde, where the avenue begins. If the apartment isn’t available, you can find more apartments and hotels nearby in these articles:
Related reading
