The Paris Arsenal, photographed from the place de l'Arsenal in the 4th arrondissement, is seen here gutted by fire in the aftermath of the Paris Commune. The image is an albumen silver print mounted on cabinet card stock, produced circa 1871, with no photographer's imprint visible on the mount. Following the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris uprising of 1870–1871, several photographers documented the city, focusing on the destruction caused by the Prussian siege and on the official French buildings set on fire by the Communards, and this card belongs to that well-documented body of ruin photography.

The façade of the Arsenal presents a two-story classical stone elevation wrapping a curved corner, its tall window bays stripped of glass and frames, interior floors collapsed, and roofline dissolved into a jagged silhouette of broken chimneys and crumbled masonry. Ground-level iron grille gates remain standing amid deep mounds of rubble and broken stone scattered across cobblestones in the foreground, while a surviving adjacent building at the right edge of the frame provides a stark contrast to the devastation. The exposure is sharp at the façade plane, rendering the stonework and structural damage with considerable clarity against a pale, featureless sky.

The Arsenal, described at the time as an arms and ammunition depot, went largely up in flames, though some parts of the building were saved; it burned on May 24, 1871. Much of central Paris was burned during the events that saw the death of the Commune, and the resulting ruins at once became a tourist attraction and the subject of remarkable photographs made for the trade.

The reverse bears a pencil inscription in a period hand reading "Arsenal," with additional notations in pencil at the lower margin reading "4 of 10," "10/13/07," "A0CB5X," and "Eb."