La Défense Metro Station

La Défense ([la defɑ̃s]) is a station of the Transilien (Réseau Saint-Lazare) suburban rail lines, RER, Paris Métro and tram. It is underneath the Grande Arche building in La Défense, the business district just west of Paris. The station is the western terminus of Paris Métro Line 1 and connects the RER Line A to the Metro Line 1 station La Défense–Grande Arche since 1992, the T2 tramway since 1994 and SNCF (Transilien) train station. It is also attached to a major shopping centre. There are 25.62 million entries and exits each year.

Highlights on the surface nearby include the monumental Grande Arche, skyscrapers that host the headquarters of important French and foreign companies, and works of urban art such as Le Pouce by César Baldaccini. From the central esplanade the Arc de Triomphe can be seen further down the Axe historique.

Until May 2004, this part of La Défense hosted an information centre of the European Union managed by the European Parliament.

Like the district it serves, the station takes its name from the 19th-century statue La Défense de Paris, commemorating the Franco-Prussian War.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "La Défense station" and modified on June 2, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.