Musée d'Orsay: A Great Metamorphosis

With its immense 175-metre long hall, Orsay houses the largest collection of Impressionist art in the world. Inaugurated on 1 December 1986 by François Mitterrand, the stone and steel building has been a classified historical monument since 1978.

Several times destined to be demolished, the Orsay station has been the subject of much debate, before finally being turned into a museum, the missing link between the Louvre and the Pompidou centre. Since then, the building has never ceased to feed the architects' fantasies.

Project after project, the Musée d'Orsay has grown, illuminated, to attract ever more visitors. Discover how these challenges have been met at each new development, to modernise this monument while preserving its historic cachet.