Hotels for Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe

Europe's richest turf race brings together the season's best three-year-olds and older horses over a mile and a half, and the form book rarely settles the argument before the final furlong. Racegoers dress for the occasion, with tweed and tailoring as much a fixture as the runners themselves, and the crowd swings between quiet study of the racecard and sudden roars as the field turns for home.

The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe is the grand climax of the European flat-racing season and the richest turf race on the continent, first run in 1920 and named for the monument at the head of the Champs-Élysées. Staged over 2,400 metres at ParisLongchamp in the Bois de Boulogne on the first weekend of October, it is the ultimate test for the finest middle-distance thoroughbreds, drawing the best of Europe and Japan to the Paris turf.

The roll of honour reads like a history of the sport — Sea-Bird, Mill Reef, Sea The Stars — and the modern era has produced dual winners in Treve, successful in 2013 and 2014, and the great mare Enable, who won in 2017 and 2018. The course itself reopened as ParisLongchamp in 2018 after a sweeping redevelopment, its grandstands looking out across one of the most beautiful racecourses anywhere.

Wrapped in Parisian style and run before a glamorous international crowd, the Arc is one of racing's true global occasions, with a purse of five million euros.