Napoleon ordered the Arc de Triomphe in 1806, laying the foundation stone on his birthday following a crushing victory at Austerlitz.

He promised his troops they would return home beneath triumphal arches, modelling this one on Rome's Arch of Titus but three times larger. Things went rather less well after that. The emperor abdicated in 1814 with the project barely started, and it took another king and another two decades to finish it.

Twelve avenues radiate from the arch like the points of a star, which is why Parisians call this roundabout Place de l'Étoile. Nine of those roads were carved through the city by Baron Haussmann in the 1850s, part of his scheme to remake Paris with ruler-straight boulevards.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the full sweep of this grand axis, from the Tuileries to the arch itself, unpacking how successive rulers shaped the view and layered their own victories onto Napoleon's unfinished monument.