The main business district in Paris is a few kilometres out of the inner city in a region called La Defense – named after the ‘Grande Arche’ which serves as its main focal point.
Designed by Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen, the Grande Arche is a modern mirror to its counterpart, the Arc de Triomphe – with which it lines up via a long avenue. I used to just be able to see it from my old apartment in Asnieres, if I leaned dangerously far out of my kitchen window (which I often did, anything to get a view) and worked quite close to the area for a while in the very upmarket suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. So I’d often spend my lunchtimes wandering around the area, lacking in green spaces but full of buildings that looked right out of a 1960s futuristic Space Age vision.
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