Paris Métro Line 1 in fifteen photographs, from La Défense to Vincennes

Line 1 opened on July 19, 1900, between Porte Maillot and Porte de Vincennes, to carry visitors between the sites of the World's Fair. It reached Château de Vincennes in 1934, Pont de Neuilly in 1937 and La Défense in 1992, and its conversion to driverless operation ran from 2007 to 2011. Today it has 25 stations and no branches. Measured in straight lines between the stations, the line is about 16 kilometres long, a little more on the real track.

In the middle the stops are close together. Argentine to Charles de Gaulle - Étoile and Louvre - Rivoli to Châtelet are both about 400 metres. The longest gap, from Gare de Lyon to Reuilly - Diderot, is about 980 metres. Ten of the 25 stations are shared with other lines, and Châtelet has five. In HelloSubway the whole line takes 371 keystrokes to type, level 4 of 7 for Paris. Here is the ride from west to east, with a photograph for fifteen of the stops.

West: La Défense to the Arc de Triomphe

The first stop is named for a statue. La Défense de Paris is a bronze group by Louis-Ernest Barrias, unveiled in 1883, that recalls the defence of Paris during the war of 1870 to 1871. The business district around it later took its name from the monument.

At Les Sablons, the Jardin d'Acclimatation is a family park in the Bois de Boulogne that opened in 1860, and this is the nearest station to its entrance. The Bois de Boulogne itself begins just west of Porte Maillot. Argentine sits on Avenue de la Grande-Armée, which runs straight from Porte Maillot to the Arc de Triomphe, and the next stop is the arch.

The Arc de Triomphe was begun in 1806 for Napoleon and finished in 1836 under Louis-Philippe. It is about 50 metres high and stands at the centre of Place Charles-de-Gaulle, where twelve avenues meet. Lines 2 and 6 stop here as well.

The Champs-Élysées and the fair of 1900

George V is on the Champs-Élysées, a few hundred metres from the arch, and the avenue is part of the historic axis that links the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. At Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Théâtre du Rond-Point is a neoclassical rotunda built by Gabriel Davioud for the Panorama National. It is the only physical remnant of the 1855 World's Fair, and it became a theatre in 1981.

The next stop, Champs-Élysées - Clemenceau, belongs to the fair that Line 1 was built for. The Petit Palais was designed by Charles Girault for the 1900 World's Fair and now houses the City of Paris's fine arts museum. Pont Alexandre III, beside it, was built between 1896 and 1900 for the same fair.

At Concorde, the Luxor Obelisk was given to France by Egypt in 1829 and raised in Place de la Concorde in 1836. It is flanked by two fountains designed by Hittorff.

Tuileries to Châtelet

The Tuileries Garden was redesigned in the 17th century by André Le Nôtre, and visitors still sit on chairs around its large octagonal pond. At the Louvre end of the garden, the Arc du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to celebrate Napoleon's victories, marks the entrance.

Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre is named for two places at once. A long arcade runs around the garden of the Palais-Royal, which was built in the 1630s for Cardinal Richelieu. A step away, the Cour Carrée of the Louvre has a west façade whose construction began in the 16th century under Pierre Lescot.

Châtelet is the big interchange, where Lines 1, 4, 7, 11 and 14 meet. On the square above it, the Fontaine du Palmier was built in 1808 to celebrate Napoleon's victories and is topped by a gilded Victory. Behind it, the Flamboyant Gothic Tour Saint-Jacques is all that remains of the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, destroyed in 1797.

East: Hôtel de Ville to Nation

The Hôtel de Ville was burned during the Commune in 1871 and rebuilt in the 1870s and 1880s by Ballu and Deperthes in Renaissance style, inside the surviving walls. At Saint-Paul, the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis was built between 1627 and 1641 by the Jesuits. It was the first church in Paris to break away from Gothic and adopt the Jesuit Baroque style.

At Bastille, the July Column stands in the middle of the square where the fortress stormed in 1789 once stood. It was inaugurated in 1840 to commemorate the Trois Glorieuses of 1830 and is topped by Auguste Dumont's gilded Spirit of Freedom.

Gare de Lyon has a clock tower, 67 metres high, built by Marius Toudoire for the 1900 World's Fair. Inside the station building, the Train Bleu restaurant opened in 1901 and was listed as a historic monument in 1972. Its ceilings are painted and its chandeliers gilded.

The next station, Reuilly - Diderot, is by an old railway viaduct on Avenue Daumesnil. The Viaduc des Arts has workshops and shops in its arches, and a long tree-lined path, the Coulée verte René-Dumont, runs along the old railway line above it.

Nation, where Lines 1, 2, 6 and 9 meet, is the square with Jules Dalou's bronze group, the Triumph of the Republic, inaugurated in 1899. Behind it stand the two columns of the Barrière du Trône, raised in 1787 to plans by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and topped in 1845 with statues of Philip Augustus and Saint Louis.

The last stretch to Vincennes

Cours de Vincennes, a broad tree-lined avenue, links Porte de Vincennes to Place de la Nation. Saint-Mandé has its parish church, Notre-Dame, with a tall square tower, just outside the Paris boundary, and a small round temple on the Île de Reuilly in the Bois de Vincennes, about 1.5 kilometres south of the station. At Bérault, the Sainte-Chapelle of the château, begun in 1379 and finished in 1552, is about ten minutes' walk east of the station.

The line ends at the Château de Vincennes. Its keep, begun around 1337 and finished around 1370, is 52 metres high and is the tallest medieval fortified tower in Europe. It is ringed by a curtain wall and a moat.

Type it yourself

Line 1 is a good first long Paris line. The longest names are Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre at 30 keys, Champs-Élysées - Clemenceau at 27 and Charles de Gaulle - Étoile at 26, and the shortest is Nation at 6. Accents are optional, so Châtelet can be typed Chatelet, as the accents guide explains. For the history of the other lines, read the Métro in eight dates, and for how Line 1 compares with the rest, the ranking of all 16 lines.