Arc de Triomphe from Satellite View - Landmark

Arc de Triomphe

🗿 Landmarks Easy Level (Zoom 17)

📍 Coordinates 48.8738, 2.2950

💡 Official Game Hint "Napoleon's triumphal arch on Champs-Élysées"

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"Napoleon's triumphal arch on Champs-Élysées"

About Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe is the grand sentinel of Paris, a monumental arch that honors those who fought and died for France. Standing at the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, it is massive, martial, and imposing, engraved with the names of generals and battles. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, its eternal flame flickering as a poignant reminder of the cost of war amidst the grandeur of victory.

In satellite view, the Arc is the hub of a massive wheel, the "Étoile" (Star). Twelve grand avenues radiate outward from it with perfect symmetry, including the famous Champs-Élysées. This dizzying roundabout is a nightmare for drivers but a masterpiece of urban design, placing the monument at the focal point of incredible vistas. The view from the top offers the best geometry lesson in Paris, aligning perfectly with the Louvre and the Grande Arche de la Défense.

The Arc is the stage for French national history—parades, protests, and celebrations loop around its base. It feels heavy with significance, a stone embodiment of French pride and resilience. Whether seen in the golden glow of twilight or under the tricolor flags of Bastille Day, it commands attention, anchoring the western end of the city's historical axis.

The arch has served as an unofficial parade ground for both triumph and humiliation. German troops marched through it in 1871, 1940 and again during the Allied liberation of Paris in August 1944, when Charles de Gaulle led a march down the avenue below just hours after the German garrison had surrendered nearby. Between those events, the arch received the body of Victor Hugo in 1885 for a night-long lying in state that drew over two million mourners—more than the entire population of Paris at the time. The Tour de France finished at the arch for the first time in 1975 and has done so every year since; each rider on the winning team receives a specially designed metal replica cast from a mould held in the same foundry that produced the original decorative eagles on the arch's spandrels.

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🛰️ Satellite Identification Tips

At zoom 17, the twelve-pointed star of avenues radiating from a single roundabout is unique on the planet. Count the spokes—exactly twelve—converging on a tiny rectangular shadow at the hub. The widest spoke running southeast is the tree-lined Champs-Élysées. Concentric rings of uniform Haussmann rooftops circle the plaza. This star pattern is visible even at much wider zoom levels.

Additional cues refine the identification once the roundabout is spotted. The formal axis line, called the Axe Historique, extends 8 kilometres from the Louvre through the Tuileries and Place de la Concorde, past the arch and westward to the modernist Grande Arche de la Défense—a cubic office block visible as a large white square footprint 4 kilometres to the west. At high zoom, the twelve avenues are distinguishable by width: the Champs-Élysées is 71 metres wide while the narrowest, Avenue Marceau to the southwest, is only 40 metres. The circular ring around the roundabout carries 12 pedestrian tunnels—the only safe crossings—each entrance appearing as a small black rectangle at the intersection between the pavement and the traffic ring.

📊 Quick Facts

Built 1806-1836

Height 50 m

Visitors/year ~1.5 million

Style Neoclassical

Architect Jean Chalgrin

Time Zone CET / CEST (UTC+1)

Roundabout diameter 240 m

Bas-reliefs 4 major (La Marseillaise, Le Triomphe, La Résistance, La Paix)

🌍 Did You Know?

Napoleon never saw the Arc de Triomphe completed—he commissioned it in 1806 but it wasn't finished until 1836, fifteen years after his death.
In 1919, pilot Charles Godefroy flew a biplane through the arch to celebrate the end of World War I—a stunt that was never officially authorized.
The names of 558 French generals are engraved on the arch's inner walls; those who died in battle are underlined.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the arch has had its flame rekindled every evening at 6:30 PM without interruption since 1923.
In 2021 the entire monument was wrapped in 25,000 square metres of recyclable silvery-blue polypropylene fabric secured with 3,000 metres of red rope, a posthumous realisation of a project first proposed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1961; the installation drew six million visitors during its 16-day life
Since 1923 the vault has held the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier whose eternal flame was the first of its kind in modern Europe; France later exported the concept to the United States, which installed its own at Arlington National Cemetery on the recommendation of a French general who attended the Paris ceremony
The rooftop viewing platform is reached via a spiral staircase of 284 steps or a small elevator that rises only to the attic; from the terrace visitors can inspect the underside of the coffered vault and read a lesser-known inscription honouring French colonial soldiers who died in the Sahel campaigns

Arc de Triomphe

About Arc de Triomphe

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