Travel Tips

When it was built, in 1983, this mall was the largest in Europe with 40.000 sqm.

It had a direct entrance from the metro Grande Arche de la Défense.

The major clothes makes are present but there are also other shops, a supermarket, a department store, several restaurants, a cinema, a nightclub.

If you go there by car, use the Central parking (expensive) and pay attention at your number place and at the pedestrian entrance parking. We often see people roaming in one of the large parkings and searching his lost car.

I am perhaps a barbarian but I do not like the coloured Thing beyond the Mall.

One of latest towers built in La Defense.

In 1991, my job was at La Defense and I remember to have seen a crowd in front of the 4 Temps. It was some French stars who were printed their hand and foot print in the pavement.

At the first ground, the track of Henri Verneuil a French movie producer.

Not very original : there is the same in Hollywood Boulevard.


Since this date, the visitors compare their hands and feet with the ones of their favorite stars.

Unfortunatly, G?rard Depardieu was not sufficiently famous in 1991 to have the privilege to leave his track here.

The surface you see is roughly at the 3rd floor. Under the "dalle" (Defensian people vocabulary for "paving stone"), there is the roads, the parkings, the basement of the building between the soil and the "dalle" and underground.

Between near thirty architects, some worldly known, the jury choosed an unknown Danish who had a genial idea : erected an Arch which was the modern equivalent of the Arc de Triomphe.

On the same line, there is the Concorde, the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe and the Grande Arche giving a gorgious perspective to the visitor.

The building is occupied by a ministry and it is possible to go on the top by an external lift which give you a marvellous view as you go up.

5 lifts can put you 90 meters high to contemplate the historical axe (such as the view La defense, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Place de la Concorde).

Every day 10:00AM - 7:00 PM (come before 6PM). Open on hollidays.

Price : 7 Euros (6-17 : 5.50 E, <6 : free)

More than 40 years ago, the CNIT was erected in the site of La Défense.

And 40 years after, it is still futuristic.

Imagine a triangle of paper put on the soil by its 3 corners. A light and elegant structure. A model for the architects.

Initially it was built to be an exibition building. Now it is a mall, in front of Les 4 Temps, with a huge book, records, photo, video and computer store : the FNAC.

Its initial purpose is not forgoten and its underground floors are still used for exibition and congress.

On the right, indoor, between FNAC and Air France, take the lift and go up to the last floor to have an internal view of the building.

Sight seeing of La Defense oriented East (direction Paris).

Initially, La Defense was a small round place in the middle of which there was the Statue erected in memory of the defense of Paris during the War of 1871. The capital refused to surrender.

Now there are at least 2 copies which are put in different locations of the area.

A large avenue goes from the Grande Arche to the Seine. it is fringed with skyscrapers.

Here there is also the AGAM Fountain : 66 nozles from which the water springs according to the music (spectacles in Spring and Summer at noon and at the end of the afternoon).

Parisians ate the rates and all the animals of the zoo but they did not surrender.

My ancesters in Paris were 2 National Guards, 1 worker, 1 baker. They resisted.

La Défense is not only a business center with sky scrapers.

There are also multiple hanging gardens (the largest surface in the World) like this one situated close to the FIAT Tower (front left when you have the Grande Arche back)

In the middle of the bassin : "Les Lieux du Corps" (the body sites) a Delfino's scupture.

Artists have made paster pieces for la Defense in a futiristic view. They are put here and there on the Parvis.

Moretti wears a 30 meters parking chimney with coloured glass fibre.

A marvellous spectacle by night.