Museums in Paris: Musée d'Orsay #1 (Part 1 of 5)

Question:  What do you do with an obsolete train station in the center of Paris?  

Answer:  You turn into an art museum.  

Welcome to the Musée d'Orsay, once the Gare d'Orsay (Orsay Train Station).

Here is a brief history according to Musee-Orsay.fr:  "In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900.  So the building itself could be seen as the first 'work of art' in the Musee d'Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914."

The station became obsolete once long distance trains grew much longer in length and the station's short platforms could not accommodate the trains.  "The Gare d'Orsay then successively served different purposes: it was used as a mailing centre for sending packages to prisoners of war during the Second World War, then those same prisoners were welcomed there on their returning home after the Liberation. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka's The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company and for" the Drouot auction house.  The building played a role in France's modern political history:  In 1958, "General de Gaulle held the press conference announcing his return to power in its ballroom (the Salle des Fêtes)."

Charles de Gaulle

In the 1970's, the "station, threatened with destruction and replacement by a large modern hotel complex, benefitted instead from the revival of interest in nineteenth-century architecture and was listed on the Supplementary Inventory of Historical Monuments on March 8, 1973. The official decision to build the Musée d'Orsay was taken during the interministerial council of October 20, 1977, on President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's initiative. The building was classified a Historical Monument in 1978 and a civil commission was created to oversee the construction and organisation of the museum. The President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, inaugurated the new museum on December 1st, 1986, and it opened to the public on December 9th."

Below are two views of the building's renovation--the first is during its conversion from train station to museum and the second is a recent photo. 

Now, some fun facts:

• The building was designed in the Beaux-Arts style, a fusion of neoclassical, Gothic and Renaissance architecture.

• The building is about 200 yards long and the roof of the great hall is more than 100 feet high.  (You could play football or rugby inside.)  

• Each year, the museum has more than 3 million visitors, that's an average of about 10,000 art lovers every day the museum is open.  (The Louvre has twice as many daily visitors.)  

• As you learned in an earlier post, you can see our apartment from the museum.  No joke.  Check out the photo below.  

View from Musée d'Orsay:  the red arrow indicates our apartment.    

Next Up:  Let's visit the museum.