Alone on the Arc de Triomphe on a foggy day

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello everybody, Oliver G here from the Eiffel Tower and today I'm going to take you in to the Arc de Triomphe, the great, the magnificent Arc de Triomphe behind me.

[00:00:10]In the middle of this chaotic Place de l'Étoile plus Charles de Gaulle where there's a million cars racing around behind me. But why am I so excited? Because the team at the Arc de Triomphe have granted us exclusive access to this arch. We're going to be in there before anyone else is in there.

[00:00:24]We've got half an hour and I'm going to take you with me. What is the arch? What was it built for? Why right here? All of these things I'm going to answer and I'm going to take you somewhere where Napoleon himself never even set foot.

[00:00:38]Are you ready?

[00:00:39]Well, let me present the Arc de Triomphe.

[00:00:54]>> [music] >> So, before we even get to the [music] arch, I want to say something that's crucially important to everybody. When you come and visit this monument, don't try and run across the roundabout. I've seen people do it in the past. It is This place is legendarily chaotic.

[00:01:15]There's 12 avenues all leading towards the arch. What you want to do is you want to take a tunnel.

[00:01:21]Take the tunnel to get over. The stairs down under the crazy roundabout through the tunnel to the base of the arch.

[00:01:29]>> [snorts] >> So, just over to my right at the bottom of the Arc de Triomphe is the eternal flame, which is a much newer addition to this arch [music] in that it was put there at the end of the Second World War. It's a flame that's always burning.

[00:01:53]Every evening they ceremoniously light the flame, but it's always on. It's quite a symbolic gesture to show that this arch is also about remembrance and sacrifice as well as being triumphal, big, grand victory arch. So, you've really got the two playing against each other and a lot of people come to visit it, lay flowers for fallen soldiers from the First World War.

[00:02:19]The first place where Napoleon never stood is the elevator, which has only been here for 40 years and it's reserved exclusively for people with disabilities, elderly people, people who are pregnant. Just ask and they might take you up in the elevator, but only if you really need it.

[00:02:50]It's quite eerie to be here at the top of the elevator and it's [music] absolutely silent. No one's here. On a busy summer's day up to 7,000 people climb this monument >> [music] >> and we've got it all to ourselves.

[00:03:01]It's quite uh It's quite amazing to be in [music] this setting like this. I can't wait to see what it's like on the top. 46 more steps to go and then we're there.

[00:03:15]So, I'm coming up the steps now.

[00:03:18]Excited to see on an admittedly foggy day what it's like to be up on top. Okay.

[00:03:27]Okay. First things first, first things first, there's a lot of fog.

[00:03:33]But I mean it. It adds to it. The fact that it's it's it's surreal to be up here when it's totally empty.

[00:03:48]This fog [music] and mist that we see up here today, like when we were standing downstairs, I knew that the the view wouldn't be what it usually is. I mean, the Eiffel Tower's over there somewhere. I can't even see it. But what it does is it makes the city seem even sort of [music] bigger and more sprawling. Like I'm looking down the Champs-Élysées and instead of seeing into the Louvre and the Tuileries at the bottom, it just fades into nothing. I can just see hundreds of of uh brake lights and headlights coming towards us and running away from us.

[00:04:19]But also to be up here when it's so empty, I don't really have words for it. I wonder if they'll let me climb up on the [music] top bit over there.

[00:04:27]Let's uh take a chance now. Talk about the history of this thing. You need to know that it was Well, they started building it in 1806.

[00:04:34]Napoleon Bonaparte.

[00:04:36]As I said, it's a complicated one. He built it uh meant to be a triumphal arch, meaning for winning the wars. At the time when they started building it, they were winning. At the [music] end of the Napoleonic Wars, they'd lost. So, it's hardly a triumphal arch, but we can see what he was trying to do. [music] Instead, you can consider it more as uh an homage to the fallen soldiers, of which there were many in France at the time. A complicated history, a chaotic history. It was built, like I said, Napoleon Bonaparte, 1806. It finished in 1836. So, 30 years it took to build.

[00:05:10]Napoleon was long gone by the time it was finished. In fact, when I said that we were going to go somewhere where Napoleon never set foot, that's right here at the top. He never got up here, but over the next 30 years, three different kings were ruling over France, three different architects built it and they all had different visions. They changed a lot [music] of things uh and it leads to this uh well, rather beautiful monument today.

[00:05:33]So, I want you to look very closely. I mean, very closely behind me, we have the Eiffel Tower.

[00:05:40]Do you see it? Of course you don't [music] see it. It's a very foggy day.

[00:05:43]Although, imagine if you went up the Eiffel Tower today and tried to see it.

[00:05:46]No, uh visibility is really limited today, but as I've been walking around, I just filmed a thing with the Patreon members, a live walk around and I was talking to them and they were quite poetic indeed and it got me thinking.

[00:05:57]The views today, when it's foggy like this, make two things really stand out.

[00:06:01]One, it makes the city look black and white.

[00:06:04]So, it feels it gives me the feeling that we're back in time seeing everything in just the sort of beige of the Haussmannian buildings, but the black and white of everything else. And secondly, it really accentuates the symmetry. So, when you're up here and you're looking down, the first thing you see are these crazy cars going around, a sort of controlled chaos. But then you can only see what feels like maybe a kilometer down each of these 12 avenues that uh spike off in every direction.

[00:06:28]That's why they used to call it the Place de l'Étoile, it's the the star.

[00:06:32]And uh because you're going to only see so far, it's almost like the fog has made a a line of symmetry around what we can see and I quite like it. That's sort of the purpose of the view from up here.

[00:06:42]>> [music] >> So, uh we can appreciate that while we're up here, but something quite striking and quite moving about being up here early in the morning and not just watching the city kind of wake up, but watching the city emerge from the fog.

[00:06:54]Since we've been standing here, I've noticed the legs of the Eiffel Tower are starting to pop up over in the distance.

[00:07:00]So, that's quite striking, but I also just talked to the head of communications, did a little bit of an interview for the podcast episode we're putting out together with this video and uh she was talking a lot about the uh the symbolism behind this arch. I think that's important to touch on because if you think about it being built by Napoleon, uh the royal families being involved in it, it stretches on to today. Being a triumphal arch, there's been marches towards this and from it from uh all sorts of different people in history.

[00:07:30]We're talking about the French, we're talking about the Nazis, we're talking about the Americans after World War II.

[00:07:36]And then more recently, uh it's been tied to, for example, the Olympic Games, the Tour de France.

[00:07:41]Uh and whenever there's a big football celebration or any celebration, New Year's Eve in Paris, people on the Champs-Élysées coming up to the Arc de Triomphe. So, it's quite um it's fascinating to think of this 200 years of history that's right here on display in Paris, often as a sort of passive background, but which today uh I think we've discovered is well worth coming up and having a look. If you get the chance to be here early in the morning, you should do it. I hope for your sake that you get a clearer day than we did, but uh it's been wonderful getting the chance to bring you up here for such a special moment. I'm going to hang around and see what else pops up, but uh as for this video, I'll say merci beaucoup and au revoir.