Champs-Élysées

This guide to the Champs-Élysées in Paris centers on August 26, 1944, when two million Parisians packed the avenue as Charles de Gaulle walked from the Arc de Triomphe toward the Place de la Concorde, four years after German tanks had rolled the same route. It follows the procession as it neared Notre-Dame, where gunfire suddenly broke out from the rooftops and crowds scattered. Journalist Helen Kirkpatrick's account of that moment is one of the threads the narration follows. Walk the same two kilometres today, past the cafés and plane trees toward the Arc de Triomphe.