The Louvres modest triumphal arch stands in the open space where customed nobles performed in an equestrian display--un carrousel--to celebrate the Dauphins birth in 1662. The design of the arch, an affable imitation of that of the Arch of Septimius Severus (Rome), was confected in 1808 by Percier and Fontaine, who also perpetrated a great deal of the Empire styles sphinx-fraught furniture and decoration. Napoleon, a record of whose victories in incised on the archs flanks, decorated the summit with the famed four bronze horses from St. Marks in conquered Venice. The Venetians had taken them from conquered Constantinople, which had acquired them in Rome, which, in turn, had looted them from, it is believed, the Temple of the Sun in Corinth. After Napoleons defeat, France was forced to return them--to Venice.