IV.1.3. A DESIGN INCONCEIVABLE ELSEWHERE

Menu: 3.1.3. Design inconceivable elsewhere

THE "GRAND AXIS" PROCLAIMS INFINITE ROYAL POWER

It links the Louvre palace to the horizon, a layout that demolishing the rampart permits. One needs a helicopter to see it.

Claude Abron

The Grand Axis seen from the Tuileries gardens / zoom

  Lithographe of 1855, Cover, Les Belles Heures des Champs-Elysées, 1855, by Marc Gaillard (Martelle Editions), n.d.

To partially grasp its length, view the Louvre palace from the other side of the river. 

Origins:

• The space that leads to the royal tombs. 
• The first straight street that leads to the first royal place.   
• The innovations of Henri IV? (Scroll down the page.)

In brief 

• Demolishing the city wall announced hegemony

• The Boulevards that replaced it gave access to Versailles

• Louis builds an arc of triumph on the main gate's site  

• It announces three centuries of calamity

• Now the arcs hover like ghosts over the traffic...

Accounts often overlook the line

that one sees only from above.

But its political message

is a key to the European past,

and its adoption by future capitals

gives it planetary importance.

 

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Demolishing the city wall announced hegemony