The high-rise modern business district west of the city centre is enlivened by various hunks of modern sculpture and is the location of the capital’s latest architectural phenomenon, La Grande Arche. Insolently skewed across the grand boulevard which stretches all the way to the Louvre, J.O. von Spreckelsen’s giant white marble open cube represents ‘a window on the world’ according to its Danish designer. Some window: Notre-Dame could be tucked beneath the 90 m-high arch. Transparent lift-shafts rise through a ‘cloudscape’ to the roof-top viewing platform and exhibition gallery.