Centre Pompidou: Paris' cultural landmark turns 40
Sabine Oelze kbm
January 30, 2017
It was once mocked for its exposed pipes. Never intended as a temple to high-brow culture, Paris' Centre Pompidou is a museum that doesn't look like one. It's as little elitist as necessary and as open as possible.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
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Paris' Centre Pompidou turns 40
It's a cultural machine. The Centre Pompidou has altered Paris' city center. Rejected at first, it is now one of Paris' most beloved attractions along with the Eiffel Tower, welcoming three million visitors per year.
The 4th arrondissement is located at the heart of downtown Paris and has always been a hub. Starting in the 19th century, the old market halls delivered groceries to Parisians. In the 1960s, they were torn down, as were many homes in the Beaubourg district. The shopping mall "Les Halles" and the Centre Pompidou (in the background of the photo) were built in their place.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/T. Samson
Georges Pompidou's project
Just a few months after being elected as president of France, Georges Pompidou (pictured) decided that the cultural center would be built. It was meant to be one-of-a-kind in the world and unite all forms of art under one roof. Inside, visitors can explore literature as well as visual art and cinema.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
Revolutionary design
For the first time in France, Pompidou held an international architecture contest with a prominent jury including Oscar Niemeyer; 681 entries were submitted. Brit Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano of Italy (above) caught the eye of the jury. Their Centre Pompidou was conceived not as a temple to high-brow culture, but as a building for everyone. This democratic principle inspired their entire design.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/D. Faget
Parking lot turned cultural center
The Centre Pompidou was built from 1970 to 1977. The construction site took up 18,000 square meters (over 193,000 square feet) in the heart of Paris. The dilapidated district of Beaubourg had been torn down in the 1960s. The Centre Pompidou was erected on a former parking lot. The site is pictured here in 1975.
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Steel and glass
The functional aspects of the building were emphasized by painting the pipes with bright colors. The architecture was based on a simple idea: A metal frame that is visible from the inside and the outside holds the building together. The façade was strengthened with additional cross beams; the space between them was filled with glass walls.
Image: picture-alliance/Imagno/Votava
Building without concrete
Early on, the raw design revealing naked pipes and bars was met with criticism. Many thought the Centre Pompidou was ugly and called it the "Notre Dame of Pipes" or an "oil refinery." Each floor had a viewing platform and offered a marvelous panorama of the city. The thick, colorful pipes, which are more reminiscent of a power plant than a museum, are its trademark.
Image: picture-alliance/Leemage
Escalator with a view
Riding on the escalator has never been so much fun. In the Centre Pompidou, they line the outer façade of the building and connect the six floors. The advantage is that no interior space goes to waste and the transparent case around the escalators allows for a magnificent view of the city. .
Image: Getty Images/AFP/L. Venance
A square full of life
Architects Piano and Rogers considered the square around the museum just as important as the interior. They wanted to make it a place that was both urban and pedestrian-friendly - a spot for street artists and strollers. If the square were an exhibition, the people would be its exhibits. That was also part of the architects' democratic design: Here, everyone is invited to realize themselves.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Demarthon
Museum within a museum
Georges Pompidou wanted to compete with New York as an art hub, which is why he had a museum of modern art housed in the Centre Pompidou. It wasn't an easy task for art conservationists to present the works in rooms without walls and with a lot of daylight. That's why a museum with closed rooms had to be built within the center.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Saget
Education for all
The idea was to make culture accessible to as many people as possible. A library is one large part of the center. It spans over 15,000 square meters and three floors and receives up to 4,000 visitors per day. All of the books are displayed; there is no archive. There is room for some 2,200 people to read, research or learn languages simultaneously in the library.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
Cinema and photography
Some three million visitors come to the Centre Pompidou every year. It is one of the most-visited sites in Paris and was one of the first cultural centers in Europe to have stayed open until 10:00 pm for the past 40 years. On the underground floors, there are two cinemas and a photo gallery comprised of 100,000 prints.
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Second Centre Pompidou in France
In 2010, a second location of the Centre Pompidou opened in Metz. It was designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and most of the artworks housed there come from the original center in Paris. Works by Picasso, Matisse and Miró can now be viewed in the small town of 120,000 residents. The aim is not only to democratize but also to decentralize culture.
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Export to Spain
Outside of France, there is also a Centre Pompidou in Málaga, Spain. French concept artist Daniel Buren decorated it with colorful glass cubes. The site used to be home to a shopping center that went bankrupt. The Centre Pompidou has committed to staying there until 2020, but the contract can be extended.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
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It's best to come in the evening, when the Centre Pompidou, with its illuminated pipes, looks like a nuclear power plant or a beautifully eerie monster made of steel.
Passing tourists stop in their tracks to take a snapshot of the building or watch one of the nearby street artists thrust a knife down their throat or spit fire.
The Centre Pompidou is a must for all visitors to the French capital. Some three million visitors a year stand in line to get inside. Rigorous security checks have been in place long before the terror attacks on "Charlie Hebdo," the Bataclan and the Stade de France.
The ground floor features a children's museumImage: Getty Images/AFP/L. Venance
Georges Pompidou's democratic vision
With the Centre Pompidou, French President Georges Pompidou, who took office in 1969, left behind a cultural monument for eternity. The idea of founding a representational museum for 20th-century art had been around since the post-war Charles de Gaulle era, but it was his successor Pompidou who realized it.
It opened on January 31, 1977 and, at the beginning, the cultural center was controversial. Critics mockingly referred to the modern construction as the "Notre Dame of Pipes" or as an "oil refinery." It was meant to be an entirely new kind of cultural center, something that had never existed before. It would unite a library, national museum for contemporary art, institute for experimental music, cinema, lecture halls and special exhibition halls all under one roof.
Tonight, I'm lucky. I have a "laisser-passer" pass that allows me to skip to the front of every line - although they're not very long on this chilly Friday evening. Once inside, the foyer on the first floor is unusually empty.
A cinema and a photo gallery are on the first floorImage: DW/S. Oelze
Illuminated letters, which lend the Centre a kind of Las Vegas feeling, guide visitors to the six floors. If you take the escalator for the first floor, you'll come to the photography section and the cinema.
The annual film festival at the Centre Pompidou is legendary. Here, avant-garde directors from all over the world, from China to Africa, can be discovered. The photography collection is impressively comprehensive and contains 100,000 prints, with constant additions.
The library contains 430,000 documents
If you take the escalator from floor one to three, you pass the Galerie des enfants in between. The Centre Pompidou is one of the first museums to set up an area exclusively dedicated to pedagogical material for children. Kids don't have to make a reservation to build, paint or watch films about famous architects.
Many tourists skip over the first three floors, although the three-story library is certainly worth a visit. Sometimes there are exhibitions there as well; at the moment there is one on French comic hero "Gaston." However, most of those who come to stand in line are here to read one or more of the 430,000 books, magazines and documents in the library.
There is no hidden archive - all the books are on display on the shelves. The digitally up-to-date library offers computers where you can learn over 100 languages or write your thesis. Or you can just relax with a newspaper and enjoy having a roof over your head. For many of the homeless in Paris, the library has become a good way to spend the day. In total, nearly one million people visit the library at the Centre Pompidou each year.
The escalators are a highlight of the museum experienceImage: Getty Images/AFP/L. Venance
Competition for New York
Once you've made it to the fourth floor, you're rewarded with a breathtaking view. This is where the permanent collection - comprising 1,600 artworks - is housed. Some 200 works by Kandinsky, 250 by Matisse and 150 by Picasso are part of the collection - and entrance is free on the first Sunday of each month.
Because the Centre was designed so openly and with a great deal of glass, walls had to be built in the museum in order to hang the paintings and protect them from excess light. Those were things architects Richard Roger and Renzo Piano didn't consider in their design.
I still haven't mentioned the grandest part of Centre Pompidou: the transparent escalators. Once you've ridden up the zig-zag escalators housed in glass tubes, you'll never want to leave the building. As you ascend, you can glimpse more and more of the city - the alleys in the surrounding Les Halles district, the Bourse and even Sacré Coeur and the Eiffel Tower at the horizon.
Light installations by François Morellet are on showImage: Getty Images/AFP/P. Verdy
From the fourth floor, you can take the the see-through escalator - which, by the way, is not free of charge - to the fifth floor for some refreshments in the café or restaurant. The viewing platforms, which are particularly spectacular at night, are also located on this floor. Since the Centre Pompidou is open every day until 10:00 pm, there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy the Paris skyline by night.
Expansion beyond Paris
In recent years, the Centre Pompidou has expanded beyond Paris. In 2010, a branch was opened in Metz, in southeastern France, and another in the Spanish city of Málaga in 2015. Last fall, the institute announced it was planning a branch in Brussels starting in 2020.
But first, it's time to celebrate - and not just in Paris, but in 40 cities around France, from Toulouse to Lille. On the weekend after Centre Pompidou's birthday (February 4-5), it is going back to its democratic roots. For two days, all of the exhibitions and events are free of charge.
