Arc de Triomphe

This guide to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris opens in a cold citadel at Verdun in November 1920, where a young soldier named Auguste Thin stood before eight identical oak coffins, each holding an unnamed man from the war's deadliest battlefields, and was handed a bouquet of carnations with instructions to choose one. It also reaches back to Napoleon, who commissioned the arch in 1806 after Austerlitz and promised his army it would greet them coming home, and forward to the ceremony that still happens here every evening. You'll hear how long it took the arch to actually get built, and the one occasion Napoleon's body passed beneath it. Stand back far enough to take in the full fifty meters of carved stone before you look down at the flame.