The Great Arch of the Defense

This guide to the Great Arch of the Defense in Paris follows Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, a little-known Danish church architect who won President Mitterrand's 1983 competition to close the city's grand axis with an open cube of a doorway rather than a monument to victory. It follows the dispute that drove him to resign in 1986, handing the project to French architect Paul Andreu, and the slight twist in the arch's angle forced by what runs underground. Look back down the axis toward the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre to see the line it completes.