Musée d'Orsay — A Train Station Reborn

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris is a world-renowned art museum housed inside a repurposed 1900 railway station that contains the largest collection of Impressionist masterpieces. Designed by architect Victor Laloux using 12,000 tons of metal, the building originally opened for the 1900 World's Fair. Saved from demolition in 1971, President François Mitterrand officially inaugurated the modern museum on December 1, 1986.

Paris · from the walk “From the Cathedral to the Iron Lady” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Musée d'Orsay, 1 rue de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris

What was the Musée d'Orsay in Paris originally built for?

Look at this magnificent building stretching along the left bank of the Seine. The Muzay Dorsay... one of the world's greatest art museums. But here's the thing... this place was Never meant to hold paintings. It was built for locomotives.......... The story begins with fire. On the night of May twenty-third, eighteen seventy-one, during the violent uprising of the Paris Commune, the Palay Dorsay... a grand government palace that stood on this very spot... was burned to the ground. For nearly three decades, the charred ruins just... sat here. A skeleton on the banks of the Seine, a scar from civil war that no one bothered to erase.......... Then came the nineteen hundred World's Fair. The Orlayon railway company needed a terminus closer to central Paree, and in eighteen ninety-seven they won approval to build right here, on the ruins of the old palace. Teams of workers labored around the clock... three hundred by day, eighty by night... to finish in time.......... The architect, Victor Laloo, faced an extraordinary challenge. This station sat in a culturally sensitive location, surrounded by the Otell des Envaleed, the Palay de la Layjon Donner, and the Palay du Loovr. So he did something brilliant. He concealed the entire industrial structure behind ornate stone façades, decorated with personification statues representing the railway destinations of Bordoh, Tulon, and Nahnt.......... And here's a detail most people walk right past. The construction of this station required a staggering twelve thousand tons of metal... that's nearly Twice the amount used for the Eiffel Tower itself!......... Because the trains here were electric... producing no steam or smoke... Laloo could enclose the entire space with a glass roof. The result was so stunning that the painter Édouard Detahy declared in nineteen hundred, "The station is superb and looks just like a Palace of Fine Arts." Prophetic words.......... The electric locomotives, by the way, were nicknamed "salt cellars" because of their peculiar shape.......... But glory faded fast. The platforms couldn't be lengthened, and by nineteen thirty-nine, modern trains had simply outgrown the station. What followed were decades of wandering purpose. It became a reception center for repatriated prisoners in nineteen forty-five. In nineteen fifty-eight, General de Gohl chose its grand ballroom to announce his return to politics. In the nineteen sixties, Orson Wellz and Bernardo Bertoluchi used its ghostly halls as film sets.......... Can you imagine? They nearly Tore IT Down. Plans were drawn up for demolition... proposals floated for an airport, a government ministry, even a school of architecture. A demolition permit was actually granted to build a modern hotel, but in nineteen seventy-one, the Minister of Culture intervened, fearing a modern building would clash with the Loovre across the river.......... On December first, nineteen eighty-six, President François Miterron inaugurated the Muzay Dorsay. Today it houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world. Monay, Mana, Dega, van Goh, Renwar... all under the arched glass ceiling of a train station that nearly became a parking garage.......... That giant clock you see inside? It served as the clock of the original railway station. Time moves forward... but sometimes, the most beautiful thing a building can do is find a completely new reason to exist.