Photo I took from, (I think) the second level of the Eiffel Tower. Why is it called the Field of Mars (Champs de Mars)? Because, as you look away from the tower, down that long strip of green that looks like a golf club airstrip, what appears at the top of this photo: the Military School, built by Napoleon! Get it? Mars -- the god of war and the military school! Much of Paris is planned this way.
I took this photo from the Eiffel Tower. The long, white curved arms of the Palais de Chaillot reach out towards the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. The Chaillot Palace was built for the 1937 World's Fair and so was never the home of royalty. It is built over the footprint of Catherine de Medici's palace, which was a real seventeenth century palace in what was then the countryside outside Paris.
After the Second World War, Chaillot Palace held the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 when it passed the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man which remains the basis of international law.
Michelin Paris, Wikipedia, Amnesty International UK
Although we know that the building of Versailles was one of the greatest acts of hubris in all history, when we stand on the marble floors we picture ourselves in ballroom attire, destined to waltz with royalty, dine in splendor and retire in a pumpkin coach.
We're happy for the moment. There are no problems. It is bliss
