Hotel Paris Beaubourg

Not far from Les Halles, the Centre Beaubourg or better known as the Pompidou Center, created a lot of mixed feelings with its radical architectural design. Built in the 1970's, President Pompidou was the originator of this museum. He wanted to make contemporary art (modern art, film, music, literature and pedagogy) accessible the widest public possible.

The architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers had chosen to construct a building with visible, external organs, free from traditional esthetic constraints, in order to leave all of the interior space available.

History of Beaubourg

Officially inaugurated in the beginning of 1977, the Art Center is unique in Europe and rivals the best-adapted centers in the United States. It is devoted to every form of contemporary art.
The Pompidou Center is divided into five floors: Temporary exhibitions in the Grande Galerie on the fifth floor. The Museum of Modern Art from 1905 to present time on third and fourth floors The huge public library covers three floors with books, video-discs, microfilms and videos. A movie-theater celebrating the 7th art with festivals according to special themes is on the first floor. Don't leave before taking a ride on the escalators. As you go up, you will discover Paris' skyline: the Sacré-Coeur, St-Eustache, the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, the Panthéon, the Tour St-Jacques, and La Défense. From the platform at the top you can look down on the château-style chimneys of the Hôtel de Ville, with their flowerpot offspring sprouting over the lower rooftops.

Designed for 6000 visitors a day, it has had more like 25,000 - proof of its outstanding success as an enduringly popular building. The overload of visitors and corrosion in the exterior steel has taken its toll however and the Pompidou Center underwent some renovations at the turn of the millennium.

Around Beaubourg
 

In front of the center, there are always street performers, jugglers, musicians, fire-eaters and the like, capturing the attention of the crowds milling along the pavement. There are also colorful sculptures and fountains by Tinguely and Nicky de St-Phalle in the pool in front of Église St-Merri. This waterwork pays homage to Stravinsky and shows scant respect for passers-by; it is the ceiling for IRCAM, the center for contemporary music founded and directed by the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. A new, above-ground extension to IRCAM has appeared, squeezed beside the old public baths on rue St-Merri.