Jardins du Trocadéro

This guide to the Jardins du Trocadéro in Paris opens in the summer of 1937, when Albert Speer's Nazi pavilion and Boris Iofan's Soviet pavilion went up facing each other across these fountains for the World's Fair, and Speer got an early look at his rival's blueprints. It follows what he did with that information, and the newly landscaped gardens themselves, laid out fresh after the old Trocadéro Palace came down. It also reaches forward to December 1948, when the United Nations met in the Palais de Chaillot behind you. Look across the fountains toward the Eiffel Tower as you take in the story.