Cirque d'hiver

The Cirque d'Hiver is a twenty-sided rotunda marked by its neoclassical exterior, where Corinthian columns at every angle frame a structure that looks like a miniature, stone-built colosseum. Designed by architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff, the building opened on December eleventh, eighteen fifty-two, as the Cirque Napoléon, named in honor of Emperor Napoleon the Third. It remains the oldest permanent circus building in the world that is still in operation, having survived for over one hundred and seventy years by serving as a theater, a cinema, and a home for circus arts.