Place Charles de Gaulle

You are standing at the heart of what was once known as the Place de l'Etoile, or the Square of the Star. Long before it became a roaring center of modern traffic, this elevated mound was a rural hilltop called the Butte Chaillot. In the seventeenth century, the royal gardener Andre Le Notre envisioned this high point as the western anchor for a grand, straight-line perspective reaching all the way from the royal palaces in the center of the city. What started as a simple intersection of hunting trails eventually evolved into this massive radial hub, where twelve wide avenues now strike out toward the horizon like the spokes of a wheel.