One of the most iconic tourist attractions in Paris will be closing in 2025 for a five-year period of renovations.
The Centre Pompidou, at the heart of Paris between Les Halles and the Marais district is one of the city’s most popular spots. Known affectionately by locals as Beaubourg, it welcomed over three million visitors last year.
The building was commissioned by French President Georges Pompidou in the 1970s as an answer to US style “cultural centers”. Its young designers Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano went on to become world-renowned “starchitects.”
Home to a collection of over 120,000 works, it is the biggest contemporary art gallery in Europe, but it is not even necessary to go inside to be impressed.
The whole area was conceived with a giant public plaza that draws a lively mix of visitors who take in art, sit in the sunshine, skate and picnic beside a building so far ahead of its time it made French intellectuals seem remarkably short-sighted. It was once called a “fat extraterrestrial” by writer Georges Perec and compared to a supermarket by sociologist Jean Baudrillard.
Famously “inside-out”, the building’s multi-coloured tubular service pipes, ducts and escalators run around the exterior of the glass edifice, leaving the interior a free and flexible space. But that design means it is now one of the least energy efficient spaces in France.
Works costing 260 million euros ($282 million) will repair the building and slash its energy consumption by 60%, as well as improving its accessibility and fire safety. A 1500-square-metre terrace will be added, giving visitors views over the west of the city. The renovation and construction project was due to start this year, but with Paris playing host to the 2024 Olympics, the timeline has been pushed back, meaning the centre will now be closed for five years between 2025 and 2030 – missing out on its 50th birthday celebrations in 2027.
The Pompidou’s 400,000-strong library collection will still be accessible at a temporary site in the Bercy neighbourhood. In addition, its artworks will still be exhibited around the country and the world.
When it does re-open, the centre’s mission will be “pluridisciplinarity, hospitality, ecological responsibility” with a view to becoming an “experimental factory for the youth”. Its collection will also be reinvented.
For visitors to the City of Lights in the meantime, all is not lost. From next year gothic masterpiece Notre Dame will re-open, rising from the ashes of its devastating 2019 fire.
