Centre Pompidou tickets and tours

The project of the Centre Pompidou was initially conceptualized to be a large, free and general use public library that until the mid 20th century was greatly lacking in the city of Paris. At the same time the city’s Museum of Modern Arts, or Musée National d’Art Moderne was in great need of a new home.

Commissioned by the then President of France Georges Pompidou (whose name was eventually given to this cultural center) an architectural competition began to win the right to plan and build the new structure.

A team of two Italian and one British architects won and gave life to what is today considered a highly avant-garde building that embraces the future. It was not initially received well by the public and critics because thought to create a strong esthetic clash with the surrounding area. One could say that the outer ‘walls’ are missing, leaving exposed the skeleton of the building, with brightly colored tubes of the mechanical systems visible to anyone. More recently it is a structure that has been praised as a great innovation architectural thought on a whole.

At the time of construction IRCAM, a center for music and acoustic research, was already on location and is today also an integral part of the Centre Georges Pompidou.