avenue des Champs-Élysées
— — the longest straight line in the city.
Not only on a wall.
“A mile and a quarter of plane trees and shopfronts, climbing west from the obelisk on Place de la Concorde to the arch on the hill at Étoile. André Le Nôtre laid out the first promenade in 1667, planting a line of elms to extend the Tuileries garden into the open country beyond. The country has long since become the city. The trees were swapped for plane trees in the nineteenth century and the avenue widened to the eight lanes it carries today. from the studio
avenue des Champs-Élysées, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The avenue runs 1.91 kilometres up a gentle gradient from Place de la Concorde to Place Charles de Gaulle, where twelve avenues meet at the Arc de Triomphe. It crosses the 8th arrondissement of Paris, dividing the formal gardens of the lower half from the commercial blocks of the upper. André Le Nôtre, the gardener of Versailles, drew the first axis in 1667 as an extension of the Tuileries; the name Champs-Élysées, the Elysian Fields, was attached later. The avenue is closed to traffic on the first Sunday of every month.
The Arc de Triomphe at the western end was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to honour the Grande Armée and completed in 1836, thirty years after the foundations were laid. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was placed beneath the arch in 1920 and its flame has been rekindled every evening at 18:30 since 1923. At the eastern end, the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk on Place de la Concorde was a gift from the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali in 1830 and raised in its present position in 1836.
Two days fix the avenue in the French calendar. On the 14th of July, the Bastille Day military parade marches down from the Étoile in front of the President of the Republic, the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe. Three weeks later, the final stage of the Tour de France finishes on the cobbles of the lower avenue, traditionally on a Sunday in late July. In December the plane trees are strung with white lights from the Rond-Point to the arch, lit at dusk and held until early January.