Archivo:Le maréchal-président de la république proclamant, du haut de la terrasse du Trocadéro, l'ouverture de l'exposition universelle.jpg

Opening ceremony of the 1878 World Fair. The 1878 Fair was the first one in France to be organized under a republican regime. The president at the time was Maréchal Mac Mahon, who had close ties with the royalist political circles. He participated in the opening ceremony on May 1st, even though many buildings of the fair had not been completely finished. The building represented on the image is the Trocadéro, which had been designed specifically for the fair by the architects Davioud and Bourdais. The building had three parts: the monumental central rotunda served as a reception and concert hall which could contain about 5,000 people. Two galleries on each side (one of them can be seen on the right of the image) went from the rotunda to the outside of the building, and were inspired by St Peter's Piazza in Rome. The Palais was eventually damaged by a fire in 1935, and does not exist anymore today.