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Bourse

Napoleon ordered the creation of the Bourse, which is situated between the Palais Royal and the Grands Boulevards in the commercial center of Paris. He enlisted the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813) who was known for his designs of private homes, a theater and of the Hôtel de Condé. The Bourse was the final work of Brongniart begun in 1807 and completed in 1825. Although he made all of the designs, he died in 1813 and another architect, Labarre succeeded him in the project.

The architecture of the Bourse is both impressive and imposing. There are sixty four columns on the outside of the building in the classical Greek style. The columns surround the construction like a Greek temple. It is a Corinthian peristyle which signifies the imperial glory, and these columns are more than ten meters high. On the inside, there are arches which seem Gothic or perhaps roman and which evoke the memory of grand European empires, like that of Napoleon the first.

The Bourse remains in use today, and is the home of the CAC-40 - the equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

France, Paris. Bourse

France, 2005, Palais de la Bourse