From the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the courtyard between the open arms of the Louvre, there extends one of the most remarkable perspectives extant in many modern city. It is called--though not in everyday speech--the Triumphal Way. From the middle of the Carrousel Arch, the line of sight runs the length of the Tuileries Garden, lines up on the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and goes up the Champs-Elysées to the centre of the Arch of Triumph. The Louvres modest triumphal arch stands in the open space where customed nobles performed in an equestrian display--un carrousel--to celebrate the Dauphins birth in 1662. The design of the arch, an affable imitation of that of the Arch of Septimius Severus (Rome), was confected in 1808 by Percier and Fontaine, who also perpetrated a great deal of the Empire styles sphinx-fraught furniture and decoration. Napoleon, a record of whose victories in incised on the archs flanks, decorated the summit with the famed four bronze horses from St. Marks in conquered Venice. The Venetians had taken them from conquered Constantinople, which had acquired them in Rome, which, in turn, had looted them from, it is believed, the Temple of the Sun in Corinth. After Napoleons defeat, France was forced to return them--to Venice.