La Défense facts for kids
La Défense is an area in the Paris Metropolitan Area of Île-de-France, located in the Hauts-de-Seine French department, just west of Paris. It is the largest business district in Europe and is home to 19 skyscrapers and more than 50 other buildings made of glass and steel. The area is 1.6 km2 (560 hectares) big. About 25,000 people live in La Défense, and another 180,000 people work there. Over 8 million tourists visit La Défense every year.
To get there, one can start at the Louvre or Arc de Triomphe and head west along the Axe historique (Historical Axis) along the Champs-Élysées and Avenue de la Grande Armée. La Défense is at the other end of the axis and has a monument called Grande Arche. It can also be reached by Paris Métro Line 1, RER Line A, tram T2 run by the RATP, and by SNCF trains, which all stop at an underground railway station called Gare de La Défense.
Images for kids
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La Grande Arche de la Défense and the Yaacov Agam Fountain (1977). The bronze sculpture on the left, seen from the rear, is La Défense de Paris by Louis-Ernest Barrias, after which La Défense is named.
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Paris, with the skyscrapers of La Défense in the background and the Eiffel Tower in the foreground taken in 2014
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The Grande Arche is the central and defining building of La Défense. It is, with the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the third arch on the Historical Axis of Paris.
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The district at night -
The name of the district comes from the statue of La Défense de Paris by Louis-Ernest Barrias which commemorates the Parisian resistance during the Franco-Prussian War.
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View from Arc de Triomphe at night.
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View from Eiffel Tower.
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The Mall "Les Quatre Temps"
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Skylight tower.
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Western part of La Défense as seen from the Grande Arche.
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Takis, Bright Trees, c. 1990
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Yaacov Agam, Fountain, c. 1977
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Guillaume Bottazzi, Untitled, c. 2014
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Tour First
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Tour Total
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Tour Areva
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See also
In Spanish: La Défense para niños
