Centre Pompidou

The Centre Pompidou was born out of the desire of Georges Pompidou, President of the French Republic from 1969 to 1974, to create in the heart of Paris a cultural institution in the name of multidisciplinarity, entirely dedicated to modern art, which would also be flanked by a vast public library, a design museum, and musical, cinematographic and audio-visual activities.

This is why the Centre includes a large public library, the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (BPI), the Musée National d’Art Moderne and the IRCAM, a centre, the latter, dedicated to music and acoustic research, an extension of which, designed in 1971 by Renzo Piano, is located on the Place Igor-Stravinsky, next to the Centre Georges-Pompidou. Located within the building is the Centre for Industrial Design.

The Georges-Pompidou Centre was inaugurated on 31 January 1977 by the President of the Republic, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in the presence of Prime Minister Raymond Barre, Georges Pompidou’s widow, Claude Pompidou, and numerous foreign heads of state. In the late 1990s, the building underwent a radical renovation, designed by Renzo Piano.

Today, it is one of the most visited museums in the world and houses a collection of around 120,000 works, in which design, architecture, photography and multimedia works find their place alongside the visual arts. It is the richest collection in Europe and the second in the world.