Decree for the Arc de Triomphe — 18 février 1806

On returning from Austerlitz, the Emperor decreed a triumphal arch to the glory of the armies, finally sited at the Étoile to Chalgrin's design. Interrupted by the fall of the Empire, the work was not completed until 1836. Together with the Vendôme column and the Carrousel arch, it inscribed imperial memory in the stone of Paris.

A decree on the return from Austerlitz

On 18 February 1806, three months after Austerlitz, the Emperor decreed the erection of a triumphal arch to the glory of the French armies. The model was Roman and openly so: the arch of Titus, that of Constantine, the vocabulary of ancient victory applied to an army of conscripts.

The site was debated. The Bastille was considered, then set aside in favour of the Étoile barrier, at the top of the rise of the Champs-Élysées: there the arch would be visible from the Tuileries and would command the western entry to Paris. Chalgrin drew the plans.

A building site longer than the Empire

The first stone was laid on 15 August 1806, the Emperor's birthday. The enormous foundations took two years. In 1810, for the entry of Marie-Louise, a full-size mock-up in canvas and timber had to be raised on the spot: the real arch was not yet out of the ground.

Chalgrin died in 1811, the works slowed with the defeats and stopped in 1814. Resumed under the Restoration and then under Louis-Philippe, the arch was not finished until 1836. The Empire never saw its monument.

Fifty metres of memory

The finished arch carries the names of victories and generals, and four great reliefs, among them Rude's Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, known as La Marseillaise. The programme remained that of 1806, carried out by a generation that had not fought those wars.

On 15 December 1840 the convoy bringing the ashes back from Saint Helena passed beneath the vault on its way to the Invalides. In 1921 the tomb of the Unknown Soldier was installed there: the monument of the imperial armies had become that of all France's dead.