As beautiful and romantic as the classical architecture of central Paris is, I am still partial to towering skyscrapers and the surrounding concrete jungle. The modern skyscraper district of Paris, like it is in London, is just outside the central region and a quick 20-30 minute Métro ride away. I did visit London’s Canary Wharf and it is basically what you would expect, a lot of tall, metal buildings and people rushing to work. La Défense is a bit different in that there is a tourist attraction there. La Grande Arche is the third arch that lines up with the Arc de Triomphe and the arch outside the Louvre; but was it really worth the trip out there (it’s not even within walking distance)? Last time I decided to visit a cemetery instead, but this time we made the trip out to the ‘burbs.

The La Défense stop on the Métro line 1 is the last stop of the line. Once you exit the station, you end up in a large terminal and underground mall much like Canary Wharf. There are underground passageways everywhich way to a variety of buildings, and I suppose that this is one of the hallmarks of business districts (i.e., Toronto’s PATH system). We couldn’t orient ourselves so we decided to follow the school group and head above ground. As the escalator brought us up to the ground level, La Grande Arche appeared before us, and it was indeed very grand (I mean big, in French)!

The Arc de Triomphe and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in front of the Louvre are very stately and commemorative arches. When you’re under the Arc de Triomphe, it feels like you’re under a large building, in the middle of a roundabout, with an observation deck at the top. It doesn’t hold a candle to La Grande Arche. Imagine a movie where aliens traveled through the universe in a (hyper)cube shipped and landed it in the middle of a city. It’s nothing special to stand beside the CN Tower, because you stand beside structures that dwarf you in height all the time. But you can actually run around the open middle area of La Grande Arche with offices beside and literally above you. You’re one tiny person standing in the middle of those three dimension objects that you sketched on graph paper in math class. It’s so big, that even at 10mm, I couldn’t fit the entire building in. I had to lie on the ground at the base in order to fit the top!

The hypercube is the termination of the Axe historique, meaning that you can walk, as the bird flies, all the way to the Louvre. That’s a lot of open space and it becomes in essence a long wind tunnel. They actually have panes of glass across the bottom of the hole to block the wind and prevent pedestrians from being blown over the side. The signs in the area were reinforced against the wind with special stone weights and bendable bodies.

The buildings in the neighborhood are in themselves pretty interesting. The skyscapers are designed uniquely and there is a lot of public art around, although because we only walked down the Esplanade de La Défense I think we missed a lot of the interesting displays. But visiting La Défense was a neat experience because for once you’re visiting a grand 21^st century monument.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: diary, europe, france, france08, travelling