Around La Grande Arche
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La Défense

Between La Grande Arche and the river extends Paris's prestige business district, La Défense, an extraordinary monument to late-twentieth-century capitalism, stretching along the pedestrianized, sculpture- and fountain-strewn Esplanade du Général de Gaulle. In front of you, along the axis of the Voie Triomphale, an assortment of towers – apartment blocks, offices of Elf, Gan, Total, banks and other businesses – compete for size and dazzle of surface. Finance made flesh, they are worth the trip out in themselves. Over a hundred thousand people come here to work during the week, and with cinemas, tourist attractions and a huge shopping centre, it's often a popular and animated place at weekends too, although the bustle of the daytime melts away to leave everywhere rather empty by night.

On the south side of the arch is the shiny globe of the Dôme-Imax, which has displaced La Villette's Géode as the world's largest cinema screen. On the other side of the La Grande Arche, the undulating CNIT building was the first intimation of the area's modernist architectural future when it was erected in the 1950s as a trade exhibition centre. The floor of the hangar-like building, all gleaming granite, is softened by slender bamboo trees; the serious activity takes place off in the far corners, where every major computer company has an office. There's also a FNAC store, and a selection of overpriced cafés and brasseries. Less damaging to the pocket is the Quatre-Temps commercial centre, the biggest of its ilk in Europe with some 250 shops on three levels, across the parvis, opposite. To minimize the encounter (if you should so wish), enter from the left-hand doors, and you'll find crêperies, pizzerias and cafés without having to leave ground level. In a new wave of construction, several more high-rises have gone up, the most striking of which is the sleek, EDF building, like a tail fin, on place de la Défense, designed by the Pei Cobb Freed group.

The bizarre artworks scattered around the Esplanade provide welcome relief from the corporate skyscrapers. Info Défense (April–Oct daily 10am–6pm; Nov–March Mon–Fri 9.30am–5.30pm), located in front of the CNIT building, displays models and photographs of the artworks, with a map to locate them and a guide. Joan Miró's giant wobbly creatures bemoan their misfit status beneath the biting edges and curveless heights of the buildings. Opposite is Alexander Calder's red iron offering – a stabile rather than a mobile – while in between the two, a black marble metronome shape releases a goal-less line across the parvis.  Torricini's huge fat frog screams to escape to a nice quiet pond. A statue commemorating the defence of Paris in 1870 (for which the district is named) perches on a concrete plinth in front of a coloured plastic waterfall and fountain pool, while nearer the river, disembodied people clutch each other round endlessly repeated concrete flowerbeds.