Read the Signs: Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris

In the 17th century the avenue was mainly fields, until it was landscaped by none other than André Le Nôtre, of Versailles fame. It came into its own when the Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated in 1836 and with Baron Haussmann’s transformation of the great boulevards in the 1860s. The upper part, toward the Arc de Triomphe, is home to upscale shops, big brand showrooms and hotels, and has been more recently peppered with a more prosaic mix of cinemas, cafés and fast-food restaurants. As the song goes, “In the sun, in the rain, at noon or midnight, there’s everything you want on the Champs-Elysées”.