Maquette du Mausolée dHadrien (musée de la civilisation romaine, Rome) (5911811430).jpg

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Pierre

LAST UPDATED: 27 NOVEMBER 2024

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You may know Paris for its cathedral Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, its café culture and its amazing museums and art galleries. The French capital is also famous for its fantastic perspective that runs from the Louvre to La Défense. This is the ‘Voie Triomphale’, aka the Historical Axis of Paris.

This line is one of the most prestigious perspectives in the world. In fact, its design has inspired cities such as Buenos Aires, Washington DC, New Delhi and Canberra. In this article, we’ll learn more about the Historical Axis of Paris. We’ll discover the stunning monuments and I reveal to you some stunning facts. 

What is the Historical Axis of Paris?

The Historical Axis, also known in French as “Axe Historique”, “Voie Triomphale” or “Voie Royale” is orientated on a 26° angle.

It follows the course of the Sun from its rising in the East to its setting in the West.

Oddly, this angle of orientation is the same as that of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral, some 1,000 metres away from the Louvre Palace.

More than just a series of monuments placed along the axis, it seems that a complex symbolism was at work in the mind of the successive urban planners.

The Historical Axis runs through some of Paris’ most celebrated monuments and squares:

• The Louvre: the Glass Pyramid, the equestrian statue of Louis XIV portrayed as ‘Alexander the Great’ in the Cour Napoléon, and the Inverted Pyramid.
• The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
• Les Jardin des Tuileries and the former Tuileries Palace
• Place de la Concorde and the Luxor obelisk
• Avenue des Champs-Élysées
• The Arc de Triomphe, standing in the centre of the wide Place de l’Etoile
• Avenue de la Grande Armée leading to Porte Maillot
• Porte Maillot
• Avenue Charles de Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine
• Pont de Neuilly
• Esplanade de La Défense
• The Grande Arche de la Fraternité in La Défense
• The Seine-Arche project endeavours to push the axis beyond La Défense, to the Seine.

Let’s move along the Historical Axis of Paris, from East to West, starting from the Louvre.

The Palace of the Louvre

Today the great perspective starts at the Louvre, immediately beyond the Church of St Germain l’Auxerrois.

The crab-shaped Palace was the main residence of the kings of France until 1682, when Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, moved his court to Versailles. It currently houses one of the world’s most wonderful museums in a complex that is known as the “Grand Louvre”.

The controversial glass pyramid of the Louvre

President François Mitterrand left his mark with his pharaonic project of “Le Grand Louvre”. He wished to complete it for the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution in 1989. The titanic project comprised of major renovation works and the construction of a new landmark along the Historical Axis: the celebrated (and controversial) Glass Pyramid.

But if you look closer, you’ll notice that the glass pyramid is not aligned with the other monuments on the Historical Axis.

That’s why something had to be added in this vast courtyard of the Louvre…

Slightly less direct, but equally telling is the 9/11 connection:

• The date September 11 in the Gregorian calendar used today almost always coincides with the New Year's Day for the Ethiopian and Coptic or Christian-Egyptian calendars. The ancient Egyptian New Year's Day ('1st of Thoth') was originally set to mark the heliacal rising of Sirius which today takes place around August 6 Gregorian (as viewed from Giza/Cairo). So it can easily be said that August 6 is September 11!

• As revealed in the recent public 9/11 Commission hearings (spring '04), the President of the United States was explicitly warned of an imminent al-Qaeda terrorist attack inside the US in a PDB (Presidential Daily Brief) memo dated August 6, '01. This was only a month before 9/11 and yet the White House inexplicably took no preventive actions. This was and still is one of the biggest controversies to come out of the official 9/11 investigation so far.

There is a connection between 9/11 and Mars to underscore the emerging nature of the date, Aug. 6.

Temple of Diana at Ephesus

 

“The temple of Diana was the chief glory of the city. The style was Grecian. The length of the ground-plan was four-hundred and twenty-five feet and the breadth two-hundred and twenty feet. The structure was thus four times as large as the Pantheon at Athens. The statue of the goddess was one of the finest works of art ever produced. It was wrought of ivory and gold, and was a marvel of costliness and beauty. The temple was decorated with sculptures by Praxiteles and one of the masterpieces of Apelles. A representation of the temple was stamped on the coins and medals of the city."—Ridpath, 1885