Grand Palais

This guide to the Grand Palais in Paris opens on an August morning in 1944, when a circus mid-performance inside the nave found itself caught between a German column outside and resistance fighters within. It steps back to the building's three-year construction for the 1900 World's Fair, its nine thousand tonnes of iron framing, and the decades that followed hosting aviation shows, horse jumping, and the Paris Auto Show, before the Nazis occupied it in 1940 and turned the nave to their own use. Listen for the moment the fighting inside escalates, and look up at the glass dome as you walk the nave.