The Main Event, what you all came here to see; the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

It's 1.9km long, 70 metres wide, and a byword for luxury... at least to those who have never visited the Wollongong Mall. It is the site of annual military parades and the finish of the Tour de France, and is named for the Elysian Fields, the place for dead heroes in Greek and later Roman mythology.

The avenue is the oldest of the 12, having begun life as a thoroughfare (of sorts) during the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715) when André Le Nôtre, landscape architect and head gardener for the Sun King, designed an extension to the Tuileries Gardens. At one time they were the gardens of a palace of that name, but the palace was destroyed during the Paris Commune of 1870-1871 and they now sit in front of the Louvre Museum. They can be seen at the far end of the avenue in this shot, as can the Louvre itself... or certainly it can be in the full sized image, I'm less sure how visible it'll be in the published copy. (It may also depend on the size of your monitor).

In between the gardens and the Avenue sits the Place de la Concorde and its Luxor Obelisk, one of two 3,000 year old obelisks that originally stood either side of the Luxor Temple from the reign of Ramesses II. (Luxor is on the east bank of the Nile, about 500 klicks SSE of Cairo. It's the site of Thebes, the former capital of the Pharaohs.) Good luck spotting it in this shot; in the raw image zoomed to 100% I can make it out but there will be minimal chance of it being visible while you're looking at it. In any case the presence of that obelisk was long in the future when the first iteration of the avenue was created in 1670.

The Place de la Concorde is also the headquarters of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the governing body of Formula 1, though you have even less chance of seeing that.

Over the years the avenue was expanded and lengthened until it became the roadway that we know today, receiving its current name in 1864.

However... nothing lasts forever and the Champs-Élysées that you see in a photo 5 years from now may look very different to this one. Apparently Parisians tend to avoid the place, with one survey suggesting that of 100,000 pedestrians who visited the avenue each day in 2019, 72% were tourists and 22% work there. Are the numbers reliable? I could not say, but they DO seem plausible. I was one of the 72% on one day of that year.

Air pollution is also an issue given the 8 lane width of the avenue and the 3,000 cars per hour that go along it. Pollution levels can be well above recommended health levels. (A move to electric vehicles may alleviate this, but would do nothing for gridlock.)

The mayor of Paris is planning to reduce the space for traffic by half, increase pedestrian space and plant tunnels of trees between the Arc, the Place de la Concorde, and the Tuileries Gardens. Certainly this is a more positive plan than anything from the brain-dead b@stards who manage Sydney's alleged urban "planning", and whose concept of a "good idea" is to leave an unsheltered path from the Sydney CBD to Darling Harbour across Pyrmont Bridge so that people can fry, freeze, or be drenched depending on the weather.

A leisurely tree covered walk from the Tuileries to the Arc sounds pleasant, and the shopkeepers along the way would doubtless welcome more foot traffic. Though that said, wallets do tend to be allergic to the prices on the Champs-Élysées, and I doubt that will change. I bought two of the world's most expensive milkshakes while waiting for our cabaret show to start at the theatre down the road. (I do not declare them to be THE most expensive, because I haven't bought any at a Swiss airport yet so I can't be sure.) Also the shopkeepers on this avenue are allergic to our attempts to speak French, as the rolling eyes and the muttered "Mon dieu!"s when I tried to order said milkshakes testify. (Sigh, they complain if we don't speak French, they complain if we TRY to speak French...) But hey, that's just part of the Parisian experience.

Were I to be insane enough to drive in Paris, I would have liked to have driven this road just for the experience of it. I doubt that will ever do so, and in any case when driving you need to keep your eyes on the road even in a place like Parigi where the speed limit https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58385502" >has been dropped to 30km/h.

Walking it, on the other hand...