Episode notes
In 1969 President Georges Pompidou chose the empty Beaubourg site in Paris's 4th arrondissement, left behind when the historic Les Halles market pavilions were demolished, for a building that would give the city both a modern art museum and its first large free public library. A competition drew 681 entries judged by Philip Johnson, Oscar Niemeyer, and Jean Prouvé, and the winners were a young team led by Richard Rogers, Su Rogers, Renzo Piano, and Gianfranco Franchini. Shaped by the protests of May 1968, they designed an anti-monument that pushed its structure and services to the outside, color coding green plumbing, blue climate ducts, yellow electrical lines, and red escalators. Le Figaro called it the Loch Ness monster of Paris.
Built for about 8,000 visitors a day, the Centre Pompidou drew more than 145 million in its first two decades after opening in 1977, and its exposed systems decayed so fast that it closed for 27 months in the late 1990s. The brand spread to Metz, Málaga, Brussels, and Shanghai, with Seoul and Foz do Iguaçu planned and a Jersey City outpost cancelled in February 2026. The museum also returned Nazi looted works, including a Braque and a Max Pechstein painting restituted to the heirs of Hugo Simon. Since March 2025 the building has been shut for a 262 million euro overhaul by Moreau Kusunoki with Frida Escobedo, due to reopen in 2030, with new parts made to look exactly like the 1970s originals.
- Why 20 percent of visitors before 2000 came only to ride the red exterior escalators and never looked at the art
- The cast steel gerberettes that tie the exterior columns to the main structure
- The 367,000 book BPI library, the IRCAM music research center, and the sloping piazza built for street performers
- The 1983 Stravinsky Fountain with 16 sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle
- How the Constellation program is sending the collection to Lille, Metz, Monaco, and beyond during the closure