Centre Pompidou

When this building opened in 1977, Parisians were genuinely horrified. The architects — Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers — had turned the building inside out, placing all the structural elements, mechanical systems, and circulation on the exterior. Water pipes are green, air ducts are blue, electrical lines are yellow, and the escalators are enclosed in a transparent tube that crawls up the facade like a caterpillar. It looked like a refinery had landed in the middle of medieval Paris.

The idea was radical: by moving all the "guts" outside, the interior became completely flexible — giant open floors that could be reconfigured for any exhibition. It was architecture as provocation, a deliberate rejection of the grand stone tradition of Parisian buildings. President Pompidou, who championed the project, died before it opened and never saw the outrage.

Today it houses one of the world's three largest collections of modern and contemporary art (alongside MoMA and the Tate), with over 100,000 works by artists including Kandinsky, Duchamp, Matisse, Warhol, and Pollock. The top-floor terrace has panoramic views of Paris that rival the Eiffel Tower, and the building draws more visitors each year than any other contemporary art museum in Europe.

The plaza in front — deliberately left empty by the architects to create a public gathering space — has become one of the great informal stages of Paris: fire-eaters, musicians, sketch artists, and crowds of people just sitting and watching. The building closed for a major renovation in late 2025 and is expected to reopen around 2030, so check current status before visiting.