Museum · Beaubourg · 4e arrondissement

Centre Pompidou

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowStill the same

Closed for renovation since 22 September 2025; scheduled to reopen in 2030.

The inside-out building of 1977 that houses the Musée national d'art moderne, closed for a five-year renovation since September 2025.

Address: Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris
Years: 1977–present

Illustration The Centre Pompidou's west façade under a clear sky: white steel lattice and glass, with the red escalator tube zigzagging up the front

The service colors read from the piazza: red for the escalators and lifts.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

The building stands on the Beaubourg plateau, a cleared slum site the city had left open since the 1930s. President Georges Pompidou decided in 1969 to fill it with a centre joining modern art, music, cinema, and books, and the design went to an international competition — the first in France open to architects of any nationality. In July 1971 a jury chaired by Jean Prouvé chose from 681 entries the scheme of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, working with Gianfranco Franchini and engineers from Ove Arup & Partners. Piano was thirty-three, Rogers thirty-seven, and neither was widely known.

Their scheme turned the building inside out. Structure, ducts, and circulation moved to the façades, leaving each floor an unobstructed open plate, and the services were painted by code: blue for air, green for water, yellow for electricity, red for the lifts and escalators. The main escalator climbs the west front in a glazed tube, and half the site was left unbuilt as a sloping piazza. The centre opened on 31 January 1977, inaugurated by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing; Pompidou had died in office three years earlier.

The building closed once before, from late 1996 to 1 January 2000, for a first major renovation. It closed again on 22 September 2025 for a larger one: asbestos removal from the façades, treatment of corrosion in the steel structure, and fire-safety, accessibility, and energy work, led by Moreau Kusunoki with Frida Escobedo Studio on the cultural side and AIA Life Designers on the technical. The reopening is scheduled for 2030.

Key facts

Competition: July 1971, won from 681 entries; jury chaired by Jean Prouvé
Architects: Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Gianfranco Franchini, with Ove Arup & Partners
Opened: 31 January 1977
Renovations: 1996–2000; closed again 2025–2030

Documentary photographs

Archival and present-day photographs, reproduced with rights verified.

The Centre Pompidou's blue-and-white shell rising above the Paris roofscape, seen from the Tour Montparnasse, with the Tour Saint-Jacques to its right and the Palais de Justice in the foreground — The building in its city, 2008: the Centre Pompidou's color-coded shell above the roofs of the Right Bank, seen from the Tour Montparnasse. The Tour Saint-Jacques stands to its right.2008 · Alf van Beem, Wikimedia Commons · CC0

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Centre Pompidou's west façade: the exposed steel frame with diagonal bracing, the escalator tube climbing the front, and the sloping piazza with its bollards in the foreground — The west front from the piazza, the escalator tube climbing the façade.Editorial illustration

The Centre Pompidou's west façade under a clear sky: white steel lattice and glass, with the red escalator tube zigzagging up the front — The service colors read from the piazza: red for the escalators and lifts.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1969
Georges Pompidou decides to build a multidisciplinary arts centre on the Beaubourg plateau.
1971
The Prouvé jury selects Piano and Rogers's scheme from 681 competition entries.
1972
Construction begins in May.
1977
The Centre Pompidou opens on 31 January.
1996–2000
First major renovation; the building reopens on 1 January 2000.
2025
The building closes on 22 September for a five-year renovation.
2030
Scheduled reopening.

On the map

Guides featuring Centre Pompidou

Take them with you.

One of the two oval Water Lilies rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie, curved canvases on both walls under a diffused skylight

GuideThe Paris Museum Pass: what it costs and when it pays offThe pass costs €85, €105, or €125 and covers more than fifty museums and monuments. Since January 2026 some of the biggest ones charge more if you live outside Europe, but the pass still costs everyone the same.Read the guide

Within walking distance

The same corner in colour, the awning red and gold, the terrace full in September sun

Street · Les Halles / Châtelet

Boulevard de Sébastopol

The Haussmann boulevard running north from Châtelet, where David and Giovanni hail the cab that takes them to the room the novel is named for.

Visit the place

The same view in colour, the roof pale gold against a blue sky, trees and crowds on the steps

Quarter · Les Halles

Les Halles

The wholesale food market that fed Paris for eight centuries, and where David and Giovanni eat oysters at sunrise on the morning after they meet.

Visit the place

The same Marais street corner in colour, red awnings and geraniums against the ivy

Quarter · Le Marais

Le Marais

The old aristocratic quarter on the Right Bank that became the centre of gay Paris in the 1990s, at the end of a migration that started in Saint-Germain.

Visit the place

The same façade in colour, the awning red and cream under a neon script sign, geraniums in the planters and the terrace full in afternoon sun

Restaurant · Les Halles

Au Pied de Cochon

The brasserie opened in 1947 to feed the porters of the old Les Halles food market, and the last place still serving at the address where they ate.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.