Wrapped at Last: Christo's Arc de Triomphe Dream Comes True

For two weeks in autumn 2021, one of Paris's grandest monuments disappeared — and became art. The Arc de Triomphe was wrapped in 25,000 square metres of silvery-blue fabric and 3,000 metres of red rope.

The idea dated back to 1961, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude first imagined it. Both artists died before it could happen — Christo in 2020 — but his team carried out his precise instructions, funded entirely by the sale of his own studies and drawings.

Some six million people came to see the shrouded arch shimmer and ripple in the wind. It was a final, posthumous gift from an artist who spent his life making the familiar strange.

Image: “Arc de Triomphe being prepared for Christo wrapping” — Syced, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.