How tall is the Arc de Triomphe?

Height and dimensions of the Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris stands 49.54 m (162 ft 6 in) tall, the figure used on this page and in our 3D comparisons. The monument is 44.82 m wide and 22.21 m deep, so seen face-on from the Champs-Élysées it is almost as wide as it is tall. That near-square outline is a big part of why it looks so massive despite being less than a sixth of the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The arch is often rounded to "50 m" in guidebooks. The precise 49.54 m is measured from the pavement of Place Charles de Gaulle to the top of the attic, the solid block above the cornice that holds the rooftop terrace. There is no spire, statue or flagpole on top, so unlike many landmarks its height doesn't depend on which features are counted.

Two vaults in one: how the structure works

Most triumphal arches have a single passage or three side by side. The Paris arch has a cross-vault design. The great central arch, 29.19 m high, runs along the axis of the Champs-Élysées, and a pair of smaller arches, 18.68 m high, crosses it at right angles. Inside, the vaults meet under a coffered ceiling. That's why visitors standing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier can look out in four directions.

The proportions explain the monument's visual weight. The main vault takes up nearly 60% of the total height. The piers either side, each more than 15 m wide, are thick enough to carry the colossal sculpted groups at their bases and the attic above. The arch is built of solid limestone masonry.

From Austerlitz to Louis-Philippe: thirty years of building

Napoleon ordered the arch in 1806, after his victory at Austerlitz, as a monument to the Grande Armée. The architect Jean-François Chalgrin designed it in a Neoclassical style drawn from the triumphal arches of ancient Rome, but on a far larger scale. Chalgrin died in 1811 with the arch only partly built, and work stalled after Napoleon's fall, during the Bourbon Restoration. It was finally completed in 1836 under King Louis-Philippe, who dedicated it to the armies of the Revolution and the Empire.

The arch's top was briefly changed in the 1880s, when a plaster sculpture was set on the attic between 1882 and 1886 and then removed. Apart from that short episode, the outline has stayed as Chalgrin's successors finished it, and the 49.54 m height has not changed since 1836.

Sculpture, names and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Four large sculpted groups stand against the piers at ground level. The most famous is François Rude's Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, usually called La Marseillaise, on the side facing the Champs-Élysées. Jean-Pierre Cortot carved The Triumph of 1810, and Antoine Étex made the other two. Higher up, reliefs show battles and events from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The inner walls carry the names of battles and generals.

Under the main vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The official monument site sets out the sequence. On 8 November 1920 the French parliament voted to bury an unidentified soldier at the arch. Coffins of unidentified soldiers were exhumed from the battlefields and taken to the citadel of Verdun, where Corporal Auguste Thin chose the sixth of eight. The body was brought to the arch on 11 November 1920 and buried there on 28 January 1921. The Flame of Remembrance was first lit by André Maginot on 11 November 1923. The site says it has never gone out since, and it is formally rekindled every evening at 6:30 p.m. by veterans' associations.

The 1919 flight through the arch

The main vault's dimensions, 29.19 m high and 14.62 m wide, are central to one of the boldest stunts in aviation history. On 7 August 1919 the French pilot Charles Godefroy flew a Nieuport biplane straight through the arch in tribute to the airmen of the First World War. The opening is less than 15 m wide, so even a small wartime biplane had only a few meters to spare on each side. Newsreel footage made it famous. It has not been repeated legally since.

Why the arch looks bigger than 50 meters

Visitors often guess the Arc de Triomphe is far taller than 49.54 m. Several features of its design and setting explain the impression, and they show how apparent size can differ from measured height.

• Width as well as height. At 44.82 m wide, the arch presents almost a square of solid stone to anyone looking up the Champs-Élysées. Most monuments of similar height, such as towers and columns, are much narrower, so they read as smaller.
• An open setting. The arch stands alone in the middle of a vast roundabout, with nothing next to it for the eye to measure against. The surrounding buildings are set back across the square, and their cornice lines sit far below the attic.
• The long approach. From the Place de la Concorde the Champs-Élysées rises gently for about 2 km toward the arch, so the monument appears at the top of a slope, framed by the avenue's trees.
• Huge sculpture. The figures in the four sculpted groups are several times life size. Their scale tricks the eye into taking them as normal-sized people, which makes the arch around them seem much larger.

The arch at human scale

Converting the dimensions to people helps reset the impression. An average French man is 179.7 cm tall according to our France average height data, so the arch is about 28 men high. The main vault alone, at 29.19 m, would take about 16 of them stacked head to foot. The arch is also wider than a typical eight-lane highway is across. And the 22.21 m depth means walking through the central passage takes about 15 seconds at a normal pace.

How the Arc de Triomphe compares with other landmarks

At just under 50 m, the arch is a mid-sized monument. Its width, more than its height, makes it imposing. Here is how it measures up against other structures in this site's landmark data. You can stand them side by side in the 3D height comparison tool.

At the small end of the scale, the 18 m faces of Mount Rushmore and the 20 m Great Sphinx are both well below the top of the main vault, which is 29.19 m high, although the Sphinx's 73 m length would never fit through it. The Colosseum comparison is fitting, because Chalgrin's arch borrowed from Roman models. Rome's amphitheater and Napoleon's arch are almost exactly the same height. The Statue of Liberty comparison is also useful: the top of her pedestal sits at 46.94 m, so the arch would come up roughly to the level of her sandals.

Taller triumphal arches

When it was completed, the Paris arch was the largest triumphal arch in the world. It has since been overtaken by two monuments that clearly owe something to it:

• Monumento a la Revolución, Mexico City: 67 m, completed in 1938 after decades of interruptions. It is generally described as the tallest triumphal arch in the world.
• Arch of Triumph, Pyongyang: 60 m tall and 50 m wide, opened in 1982 for Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday. It was explicitly modeled on the Paris arch and built about 10 m taller.

So the Arc de Triomphe is now third among the best-known large arches by height. It remains the reference design that later monuments copy or try to outdo.

Visiting the terrace

The rooftop terrace at the top of the attic gives one of the best views in Paris, looking down the full length of the Champs-Élysées toward the Louvre in one direction and out to the towers of La Défense in the other. From here, about 50 m up, the twelve avenues radiating from the old Place de l'Étoile (Square of the Star) line up like spokes. This is the clearest way to see Haussmann's street plan.

Some practical points from the official site as of October 2026:

• Stairs only for now. The elevator has been out of service for maintenance since late July 2026, so the only way up is the 284-step spiral staircase. The operator expects the lift back in 2027 after renovation.
• Access by tunnel. Reach the arch through the Passage du Souvenir, an underground walkway from the top of the Champs-Élysées or Avenue de la Grande-Armée. Never cross the roundabout at street level.
• Late hours. The monument stays open until 11 p.m. from April to September and 10:30 p.m. from October to March, with last entry 45 minutes before closing. It closes on certain national holidays and on the morning of 11 November.
• Getting there. Charles-de-Gaulle–Étoile station serves metro lines 1, 2 and 6 and RER A.

A climb of 284 steps for about 50 m of height works out to an average rise of around 17 cm per step, a normal stair repeated many times over. The spiral is narrow, so allow time and take breaks on the landings. For more Paris monuments and how they compare, see our landmarks hub.