Pompidou Centre

When you emerge from the Chatelet-Les Halles metro station you are in the Forum des Halles. In centuries past a main market area, it is now a gigantic shopping complex of Escherian complexity and Westfieldian banality. It is a relief to escape, but the horror soon returns. The surrounding streets remind me of the Church Street mall – boring, bland, and bountiful with bogans – Parramatta on the Right Bank.

But a block or so east is the Centre Pompidou, the home of the Musée National du Art Moderne. I remember the furor when it was opened in the late 1970s, with the press screaming that the building was inside out, that it looked like it still needed cladding, and so on. (This was the press that a few years before had declared that ‘Blue Poles’ was a waste of money.) I remember being impressed that it had the escalator on the outside.

Now, I love the work of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers – Aurora Place in Macquarie Street is a beautiful building, and ‘South Pacific’ is my favourite musical – sorry, that’s Rodgers with a ‘d’. But the plaza beside it is a failure – butt-ugly and with dodgy paving (not unlike outside Fisher Library), and with a slope that makes it very difficult for anyone with legs to walk on.

I dreaded that the building itself, designed to have the air conditioning, lifts etc on the outside so as to maximise the exhibition space within, might look as rundown and tacky as the knockoffs you see in office buildings and shopping centres everywhere (the exposed conduits and wiring are intentional features of one part of Macquarie Centre, not known for its architectural audacity). But it has aged far better than the plaza. The windows need a wash, but that’s simple maintenance.

The permanent collection inside is comprehensive and well-laid out. Here’s where you want to come if you want to see lots of Picasso, Braque and Leger, and Fauvists and Surrealists and Futurists and any other art movement from the twentieth century. A Chagall made Megan happy, and half a dozen Kandinskys and a case containing his brushes and paints and gouaches and crayons made me happy. I was also pleased to see one of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fontaines’, enclosed in a case lest anyone feel tempted to utilise it. (If you don’t understand that, Google it.)



The view from the top floor is terrific, with most of the Paris skyline around you (rather than below you, which you get at the Tours Eiffel and Montparnasse). A lovely view of Montmartre, which is as close as we’ll get to it on this trip.

A word of warning. The boutique is full of overpriced crap and snobby staff, the toilets haven’t been cleaned since the building opened, and the so-called café is really the Woolies cafeteria. We couldn’t face lunch with such vile conditions, so we went outside. Next to the Pompidou is the Stravinsky Fountain, a pool of kinetic sculptures which could provide hours of amusement if you have a supply of good coffee. And one of the cafés next to the fountain is Dame Tartine, which has a great atmosphere (they played Ella) and young staff with a good attitude and an idiomatic grasp of English. We had wonderful croque-monsieurs, made with ham off the bone, comte and green peppercorns – haute cuisine meets comfort food, and reasonably cheap.