Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff

Rue Bassano, entirely modern now, existed in part as Ruelle des Jardins in the early years of the eighteenth century. Rue Galilée was Chemin des Bouchers in 1790, then Rue du Banquet. So we come to la Place de l’Étoile, the high ground known in long-gone times as “la Montagne du Roule.” Till far into the eighteenth century it was without the city bounds and beyond the Avenue des Champs-Élysées which ended at Rue de Chaillot, a tree-studded, unlevelled, grass-grown octagonal stretch of land. Then it was made round and even, and became a favourite and fashionable promenade, known as l’Étoile de Chaillot, or the Rond-Point de Neuilly. The site had long been marked out for the erection of an important monument when Napoléon decreed the construction there of the Arc de Triomphe. The first stone of the arch was laid by Chalgrin in 1806, the Emperor and his new wife, on their wedding-day passed beneath a temporary Arc de Triomphe made of cloth, as the stone structure was not yet finished. Of the statuary which decorate the arch, the most noted group is the Départ, by Rude. The frieze shows the going forth to battle and the return of Napoléon’s armies, with the names of his generals engraved beneath.[F]