If the purpose for which the Musée d'Orsay in Paris was created is to preserve and collect great works of art, the Museum building itself is one of those works, indeed the first. Looking at it from the outside, from the Tuileries gardens on the opposite bank of the Seine, the Musée d'Orsay is a kind of very long barracks with singular architectural lines, not without a certain elegance. And, if it looks more like a train station than a museum it is due to the fact that it was built precisely to be a train station.
At the end of the 19th century, the terminus in Paris of long-distance rail lines stopped at the Gare d'Austerlitz, a little too far from the city center. It was thus decided, partly in anticipation of the Universal Exposition that was to be held in 1900, to build a modern and very central railroad yard, right in front of the Louvre and the Tuileries.
The work was completed in just two years,
on an area between the Quay d'Orsay and the Rue de Lille, on the Left Bank of the Seine, an area that had previously been occupied by the cavalry barracks and the Palais d'Orsay, built in 1810 to be used to house the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but later assigned to the Council of State and the Court of Auditors.
Unfortunately, in 1871, during the disastrous civil war that disrupted the life of the capital, the entire district was destroyed by the flames of frightful fires. On those grounds, therefore, architect Victor Laloux carried out his project by also building a luxury hotel alongside the Southwest Railway Station.
The complex, work on which was completed in the record time of only two years, was inaugurated on July 14, 1900, on the anniversary day of the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The press from all over the world talked about it to emphasize the modernity of the railway facilities, hospitality services and architectural excellences such as the large arrivals and departures hall a full 32 meters high, 40 meters wide and138 meters long. In short, a great success.
Everything ran smoothly for almost four decades.
Then, in 1939, trouble began. The gradual electrification of the railway lines and the consequent structural change of locomotives and train cars began to make the Gare d'Orsay lose its importance, since it could only provide connections in the outlying areas and nothing more. It was a kind of agony, which saw the depopulation not only of the station's beautiful high-vaulted glass and metal halls, but also of the entire surrounding area, including the luxury hotel. For a time, the Gare d'Orsay was used in various ways. First as a shipping center for prisoner packages during the war, then as a prisoner reception center during the Liberation period.
It served as a set for many films and was also the permanent home of the Renaud Barrault theater company. Finally, in 1974, it was also used as the temporary headquarters of the famous Drouot auction house.
The turning point came when the Direction des Musées de France.
...included the former railway station in the extraordinary list of Historic Monuments. A few years later, in fact, in 1977, on the initiative of then-President of the Republic Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the building was classified as a historic monument destined to become the Musée d'Orsay. A special public foundation was established, which entrusted the restoration, adaptation, and transformation of the spaces to architects Bardon, Colboc, and Philippon of the ACT-Architecture firm, whose design respected Victor Laloux's architecture by adapting it to the building's new destination.
But it was the team of set designers and architects led by Italy's Gae Aulenti, in collaboration with Italo Rota, Pietro Castiglioni and Richard Peduzzi, who conceived and carried out the adaptation and interior design of the museum as it is today.
As many as 12,000 tons of metal structures, 35,000 square meters of stained glass and glass walls, and as many as 1,600 coffers with stucco rosettes were used in the transformation of the old train station into today's museum. As many as 10 escalators and 12 elevators and freight elevators were installed inside the museum.
The work was inaugurated on December 1, 1986, by acting President François Mitterrand, and eight days later, on December 9, the museum opened its doors to the visiting public.
Figures for its first 30 years of operation, from 1986 to 2016, attest that as many as 86,149,839 visitors have visited the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, coming from all over the world to pay homage to extraordinary works of art including paintings, sculptures and objets d'art, produced between 1848 and 1914 and coming in part from the Louvre Museum, the Jeu de Paume Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
