Centre Pompidou, an icon of  20TH-CENTURY architecture opened 2 February 1977, becoming one of the most popular cultural venues in the world.

It was a truly pioneering building for its time, an heir to the great iron buildings of the Industrial Age. In many ways futuristic, the Centre Pompidou in Paris is heir to the architectural utopias of the 1960s. It is innovative, even revolutionary character has made the Centre Pompidou one of the most emblematic buildings of the 20th century.

 

Designed as an “evolving spatial diagram” by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the architecture of the Centre Pompidou boasts a series of technical characteristics that make it unique in the world – the inspiration, even the prototype, of a new generation of museums and cultural centres. It is distinctive firstly in the way it frees up space inside, with each floor extending through the building entirely uninterrupted by load-bearing structures.