Arc De Triomphe Wrapped

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For almost 60 years, the artist known as Christo dreamed of wrapping the Arc de Triomphe. As a young man, having fled communist Bulgaria, he would gaze at the monument from his tiny garret apartment. A photomontage dated 1962 shows the 164-foot-high arch crudely bundled up. Freedom trumped the sacred. He always wanted people to look again at what perhaps they did not see.

Now, a little over a year after Christo’s death at the age of 84, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped” is a reality. Some 270,000 square feet of silvery blue fabric, shimmering in the changing light of Paris, hugs the monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 at the giddy height of his power. The polypropylene material, its tone reminiscent of the city’s distinctive zinc roofs, is secured but not held rigidly fast by almost 1.9 miles of red rope, in line with the artist’s meticulous instructions.