Beaubourg Museum / Pompidou Center

This is one of these places Parisians either love or hate…

The Museum of Modern Art is the most renowned part of the Cultural Center (with its permanent collection on the fourth floor and temporary exhibitions on the fifth), but there’s also a conference center, a movie theater, a library… And all of this is devoted to modern creation.

In case you ever wondered, the outside pipe colors have a meaning ! The blue pipes are for the air conditioning and climate control ; the green ones are for plumbing ; the yellow ones for electrical wires ; and the red ones for safety devices such as fire extinguisher).

Beaubourg is the work of a team of architects Renzo Piano, Gianfranco Franchini and Richard Rogers. This was the very first time that foreign architects were allowed to submit projects in France. After seeing Beaubourg, some were surprised it wasn’t the last! The Figaro newspaper claimed: « Paris now has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness »…