La Défense neighborhood offers visitors a different panorama of Paris. Packed with futuristic skyscrapers, this area includes a shopping mall called Quatre Temps with a variety of restaurants and retail electronic stores. This department store, built in 1980, was the largest in Europe during the eighties.
As well as soaring towers of glass and cement, the district houses an open-air exhibition of over sixty contemporary works of art, squares, fountains, and hanging gardens.