Triumphal Arch

This guide to the Triumphal Arch in Brussels opens on a wooden fake — the arch that stood here for twenty-five years while Belgium's grand 1880 anniversary exhibition, and the funding fights around it, dragged on. It follows architect Gedeon Bordiau, who pushed the project for two decades and died before it was finished, and the moment Leopold the Second finally brought in the French architect Charles Girault to force it through. Round-the-clock crews worked through the night to hit an impossible deadline for the country's next big anniversary. Stand beneath it and imagine the wood-and-paint version that stood here instead.