Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou, more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Centre Pompidou is located in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in Europe. The Place Georges Pompidou is an open plaza in front of the museum.
The Centre Pompidou will be closed for renovation from September 2025 until 2030. The BPI will be temporarily relocated to its Lumière building.
History
Foundation
The idea for a multicultural complex, bringing together different forms of art and literature in one place, developed, in part, from the ideas of France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux, a proponent of the decentralisation of art and culture by impulse of the political power. In the 1960s, city planners decided to move the food markets of Les Halles, historically significant structures long prized by Parisians, with the idea that some of the cultural institutes be built in the former market area. Hoping to renew the idea of Paris as a leading city of culture and art, it was proposed to move the Musée d'Art Moderne to this new location. Paris also needed a large, free public library, as one did not exist at this time. At first the debate concerned Les Halles, but as the controversy settled, in 1968, President Charles de Gaulle announced the Plateau Beaubourg as the new site for the library.In 1969, Georges Pompidou, the new president, adopted the Beaubourg project and decided it to be the location of both the new library and a centre for the contemporary arts. In the process of developing the project, the IRCAM was also housed in the complex.
Design selection
The Rogers and Piano design was chosen among 681 competition entries. World-renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Prouvé, and Philip Johnson made up the jury. It was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate. The selection was announced in 1971 at a press conference, where the contrast between the sharply-dressed Pompidou and "hairy young crew" of architects represented a "grand bargain between radical architecture and establishment politics."2025–2030 closure and international expansion
A major renovation is due to take place between 2025 and 2030. The Centre Pompidou is closed from 2 March 2025 until 2030. The BPI is temporarily relocated to its Lumière building at 40 avenue des Terroirs de France on 25 August 2025.On 22 September 2025, the Centre Pompidou announced its full closure for a major renovation project scheduled to last until 2030. Although preparatory closures had begun earlier in the year, with the suspension of access to parts of the collection and the relocation of the Bibliothèque publique d’information, the complete shutdown marked the start of the modernization phase. The renovation aims to remove asbestos, upgrade technical systems, improve accessibility, and enhance the building’s energy efficiency while preserving its architectural identity. The project is being led by the architectural firm Moreau Kusunoki, in collaboration with Frida Escobedo.
While the renovation is underway, Centre Pompidou will internationally expand, opening its first South American space in 2027. The new $240 million satellite is schedule to launch in November 2027 and will be located in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Centre Pompidou plans to continue its satellite expansion in other locations, such as Shanghai and Málaga. A North American satellite is currently approved for construction in Jersey City, New Jersey.
At the same time, the Centre Pompidou launched the program “Constellation”, designed to display its national collection across France and internationally. Early Constellation projects included exhibitions in Lille, Metz, and Monaco.
Architecture
Design
and Renzo Piano, two emerging architects in their thirties, designed the first major example of an "inside-out" building with its structural system, mechanical systems, and circulation exposed on the exterior of the building, reflecting their belief that they had no chance of winning the commission. Gianfranco Franchini was also involved in the design.Explaining the ideas that informed the Centre Pompidou's design, Piano said, "Our idea was a museum that would inspire curiosity, not intimidate people, and that would open up culture to all... Our credo was a place for all people – for the poor and rich, the young and old".
The daring design increased the efficiency of interior space utilization. Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety are red. According to Piano, the design was meant to be "not a building but a town where you find everything – lunch, great art, a library, great music".
The Centre Pompidou, initially met with dismay akin to the Eiffel Tower's reception in its time, is now widely regarded as an artwork in its own merit. National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." An article in Le Figaro declared: "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." But two decades later, while reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly coloured tubes for mechanical systems". The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionised museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."
Construction
The centre was built by GTM and completed in 1977. The building cost 993 million French francs. Renovation work conducted from October 1996 to January 2000 was completed on a budget of 576 million francs. The principal engineer was the renowned Peter Rice, responsible for, amongst other things, the During the renovation, the centre was closed to the public for 27 months, re-opening on 1 January 2000.In September 2020, it was announced that the Centre Pompidou would begin renovations in 2023, which will require either a partial closure for seven years or a full closure for three years. The projected cost for the upcoming renovations is $235 million. In January 2021 Roselyne Bachelot, France's culture minister, announced that the centre would close completely in 2023 for four years.
Description and components
Because of its location, the centre is known locally as BeaubourgIndoors
Centre Pompidou houses three major institutions:- Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library
- Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern and contemporary art in Europe
- IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research
During the major renovation of the Centre Pompidou from March 2025 until 2030, the BPI will be temporarily relocated to its Lumière building at 40 Avenue des Terroirs de France on 25 August 2025.
Outdoors
The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012.Stravinsky Fountain
The nearby Stravinsky Fountain, on Place Stravinsky, features 16 whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the coloured works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.Place Georges Pompidou
The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers, such as mimes and jugglers. In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature and sketch artists, tables set up for evening dining, and even skateboarding competitions.In 2021, the artists Arotin & Serghei realised for the re-inauguration of the Place Georges Pompidou after years of works, and in the context of IRCAM's festival Manifeste the intermedial large-scale installation Infinite Light Columns / Constellations of The Future 1–4, Tribute to Constantin Brâncuși, installed along Piano's IRCAM Tower, on the opposite site of Brâncuși's studio, visible from both, the Place Igor Stravinsky and Place Georges Pompidou. Then president of the Centre Pompidou, Serge Lasvignes, said in his 2015 inauguration speech: "The installation symbolises what the Centre Pompidou wants to be... a multidisciplinary ensemble... it is the resurrection of the initial spirit of the Centre Pompidou with the Piazza, the living heart of creation".
Attendance
By the mid-1980s, the Centre Pompidou was becoming the victim of its huge and unexpected popularity, its many activities, and a complex administrative structure. When Dominique Bozo returned to the Centre in 1981 as Director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, he re-installed the museum, bringing out the full range of its collections and displaying the many major acquisitions that had been made.By 1992, the Centre de Création Industrielle was incorporated into the Musée National d'Art Moderne, henceforth called "MNAM/CCI". The CCI, as an organisation with its own design-oriented programme, ceased to exist, while the MNAM started to develop a design and architecture collection in addition to its modern and contemporary art collection.
The Centre Pompidou was intended to handle 8,000 visitors a day. In its first two decades it attracted more than 145 million visitors, more than five times the number first predicted., more than 180 million people have visited the centre since its opening in 1977. However, until the 1997–2000 renovation, 20 percent of the centre's eight million annual visitors—predominantly foreign tourists—rode the escalators up the outside of the building to the platform for the sights.
During a three-year renovation ending in its 2000 reopening, the Centre Pompidou improved accessibility for visitors
Between 1977 and 2006, the centre had 180 million visitors. Since 2006, the global attendance of the centre is no longer calculated at the main entrance, but only those of the Musée National d'Art Moderne and of the public library, but without the other visitors of the building. In 2017, the museum had 3.37 million visitors. The public library had 1.37 million.
The Musée National d'Art Moderne saw an increase in attendance from 3.1 million to 3.6 million visitors in 2011, and 3.75 million in 2013. The 2013 retrospective Dalí broke the museum's daily attendance record: 7,364 people a day went to see the artist's work.
Visitors to the centre totalled more than 5,209,678 in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum.
The centre had 3.1 million visitors in 2022, a large increase from 2021 but still below 2019 levels, due to closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in France.