Description
Green pipes for water, blue for air, yellow for electricity, red for people on the move: the Centre Pompidou wears its insides on the outside. In Paris, it opened in 1977 and is home to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum of modern art in Europe, along with a huge public library and a music research institute.
The architects were two unknowns in their thirties, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, picked from 681 entries. They had gone for broke, sure they had no chance of winning. When it opened, Le Figaro wrote that Paris now had its own Loch Ness monster.
The president who commissioned it was Georges Pompidou, who wanted art, books and music under one roof in the old Beaubourg quarter, by Les Halles, to renew the idea of Paris as a leading city of culture. Piano called it "not a building but a town".
The building was first met with the same skepticism as the Eiffel Tower, then won over its critics, and National Geographic called it "love at second sight".
The museum's collection starts in 1905 and runs to the present: Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Chagall, Pollock, Warhol and many more, along with big rotating exhibitions. It drew 3.37 million visitors in 2017 alone.
The center is more than a museum. The public library, the BPI, holds about 367,000 books plus periodicals, audiovisual material and photographs, all for consultation on site, and screens documentary films. IRCAM, next door, researches music and sound. All under one roof.
Outside, the escalators in their glass tubes climb the facade, and they became a draw of their own: historically one visitor in five came only to ride them for the view of the rooftops of Paris.
In the square, Place Georges Pompidou hosts street performers, mimes and jugglers. Just beside, the Stravinsky Fountain has 16 moving sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, inspired by the composer's works.
It was built for 8,000 visitors a day. In its first twenty years it received 145 million, five times the forecast. The jury of the Pritzker Prize, which Rogers won in 2007, said the building "revolutionised museums", turning elite monuments into popular places. The building cost 993 million French francs and needed a major renovation between 1996 and 2000.
Don't miss
• The modern art collection.
• The escalators in their glass tubes.
• The Stravinsky Fountain.
Did you know?
• In the Bond film Moonraker, a fifth-floor room plays the office of Holly Goodhead in the villain's space complex.
The architects were two unknowns in their thirties, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, picked from 681 entries. They had gone for broke, sure they had no chance of winning. When it opened, Le Figaro wrote that Paris now had its own Loch Ness monster.
The president who commissioned it was Georges Pompidou, who wanted art, books and music under one roof in the old Beaubourg quarter, by Les Halles, to renew the idea of Paris as a leading city of culture. Piano called it "not a building but a town".
The building was first met with the same skepticism as the Eiffel Tower, then won over its critics, and National Geographic called it "love at second sight".
The museum's collection starts in 1905 and runs to the present: Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Chagall, Pollock, Warhol and many more, along with big rotating exhibitions. It drew 3.37 million visitors in 2017 alone.
The center is more than a museum. The public library, the BPI, holds about 367,000 books plus periodicals, audiovisual material and photographs, all for consultation on site, and screens documentary films. IRCAM, next door, researches music and sound. All under one roof.
Outside, the escalators in their glass tubes climb the facade, and they became a draw of their own: historically one visitor in five came only to ride them for the view of the rooftops of Paris.
In the square, Place Georges Pompidou hosts street performers, mimes and jugglers. Just beside, the Stravinsky Fountain has 16 moving sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, inspired by the composer's works.
It was built for 8,000 visitors a day. In its first twenty years it received 145 million, five times the forecast. The jury of the Pritzker Prize, which Rogers won in 2007, said the building "revolutionised museums", turning elite monuments into popular places. The building cost 993 million French francs and needed a major renovation between 1996 and 2000.
Don't miss
• The modern art collection.
• The escalators in their glass tubes.
• The Stravinsky Fountain.
Did you know?
• In the Bond film Moonraker, a fifth-floor room plays the office of Holly Goodhead in the villain's space complex.