Grand Palais

This building is held together by an architectural divorce. The Grand Palais isn't the work of one genius architect, but four rivals who literally couldn't be separated after a 1896 competition, so officials just... hired them all. Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, Albert Thomas, and Charles Girault were forced into what one expert calls an "integrated trigamy," each designing different sections that somehow had to work together. Standing here between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine, you're looking at 9,000 tons of steel and glass - more metal than the Eiffel Tower uses. That soaring glass roof stretching 240 meters above you started cracking almost immediately after the 1900 Universal Exhibition opened, thanks to the ground literally sinking beneath it. The builders knew the water table was dropping but couldn't delay construction, so they just... crossed their fingers. See those bronze chariots crowning each wing? The one facing the Champs-Élysées shows Immortality defeating Time, while the Seine-side depicts Harmony conquering Discord - pretty ironic for a building born from architectural rivalry, right? When a glass panel finally crashed down in 1993, this place stayed closed for fourteen years. But hey, that's what happens when you build the impossible in just three years.