A city full of ancient buildings needs a special place to put its new buildings. At the end of the First World War the city of Paris decided to develop the area near the Arc de Triomphe at the Etoile to La Defense. Eventually setteling on a good spot, the area would be named after the monument 'La Défense de Paris', which was erected at this site in 1883 to commemorate the war of 1870. Eventually being known simply as “La Defense”, this space was to be filled with endless rows of modern skyscrapers. Slowed by the Great Depression in the 1930s, by 1951 the La Défense site was cemented as an office center, and by 1958 construction started. What developed by the 1960s was a mix of mostly cheap towers of different heights.

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This caused a public outcry, as a “forest of towers” disturbed the now world famous view on the Arc de Triomphe as seen from the Etoile. In response a new monument was built at the entrance of the Défense, called the Grande Arche de la Défense. Initiated by the French president Mitterand who wanted to build a “20th century Arc de Triomphe”, the eventual construction was made to look like a titanic cube: it is a 106 meter building, pale white, with the middle part left open, the sides of which contain offices.

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