page_title: History of Paris (1946–2000)
section_title: The creation of La Défense
hierarchical_section_title: History of Paris (1946–2000) / Paris under de Gaulle  (1958–1968) / The creation of La Défense
caption_attribution_description: English: Views of the Paris rooftops in April 1970. From a series of photographs taken from old coloured slides.Wikimedia photograph with applied colour correction, brightening/contrast/sharpening/haze removal with DxO PhotoLab, Viewpoint 3, and Adobe Photoshop CS2. Kept to original aspect ratio.
context_page_description: At the end of the Second World War, most Parisians were living in misery. Industry was ruined, housing was in short supply, and food was rationed. The population of Paris did not return to its 1936 level until 1946, and grew to 2,850,000 by 1954, including 135,000 immigrants, mostly from Algeria, Morocco, Italy and Spain. The exodus of middle-class Parisians to the suburbs continued. The population of the city declined during the 1960s and 1970s before finally stabilizing in the 1980s.
  In the 1950s and 1960s, the city underwent a massive reconstruction, with the addition of new highways, skyscrapers, and thousands of new apartment blocks. Beginning in the 1970s, French Presidents took a personal interest leaving a legacy of new museums and buildings: President François Mitterrand had the most ambitious program of any President since Napoleon III. His Grands Travaux included the Arab World Institute, a new national library called the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand; a new opera house, the Opéra Bastille, a new Ministry of Finance, Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances, in Bercy. The Grande Arche in La Défense and the Grand Louvre, with the addition of the glass pyramid by I. M.
context_section_description: The most important project of de Gaulle's government was the construction of a new business district at La Défense,  just west of the city limits.  The idea was to create a new business center, since there was no more room to build in the traditional business center, around the Opera; and also to extend the historic axis of the city, an imaginary east-west line which ran from the porte-Maillot at the eastern edge of the city to Place de la Bastille, to the Louvre, and through the Place de la Concorde along the Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. It allowed the creation of a French version of Manhattan, without disturbing the skyline and architecture of the historic center of the city. The idea had been discussed and various proposals put forward as early as the 1930s, but did not begin to move ahead until 1957. A site of nine hundred hectares, between two cemeteries, between Paris and Nanterre, was chosen.  he first company to move to the site was Elf Aquitaine, the largest French company; they had little choice, since they were owned by the French government. It was also decided to add residential buildings, since there was not yet a Métro line, and so that the regional train line was not overwhelmed with commuters.
  Some of the more daring components of the original plan were dropped because of public opposition or cost. A planned 250-meter-high skyscraper by the architect Zehrfuss was reduced in height. The famed modernist architect Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a huge cultural center near the Rond-point de La Défense, with a museum of 20th century art, a music conservatory, and the national school of architecture,  but this component was never built. The Museum of 20th century art instead became a museum of 19th century art, and was installed in the former Gare d'Orsay train station. The project developed slowly; most of the towers did not go up until the 1970s, and formed a backdrop to the Arc de Triomphe. By 2000 more than a million square meters of office space was created at La Défense, more than in the old central business district around the Opera.
caption: View of La Défense from the Arc de Triomphe in 1970, with the first towers
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