Pompidou Center

The brightly colored pipes that make up the outside of the Pompidou Center (or Le Centre Pompidou) are like a wild declaration: this is not a museum steeped in the past - there will be no need to speak in hushed, deferential tones. If that’s what you are looking for, the Louvre and Musee D’Orsay are nearby. The iconoclastic feel of the Pompidou Center’s exterior, which looks like an exposed ribcage painted in bright primary colors, carries over into the building’s contents. You won’t find the subtle Flemish painters of the Louvre, or the magnificent art of Notre Dame. Make no mistake: Le Centre Pompidou is about the present, the future. Its main attraction is the Museum of Modern Art on the 4th and 5th floors, which are dedicated to art movements like Surrealism, Fauvism, Dadaism and plenty of other abstract art styles.

The main hall of the Pompidou Center feels like staring into a child’s playroom. The bright colors, the large, friendly letters, the uncluttered layout of thousands of pieces of art – it’s about as irreverent as a museum can get, and is noted as helping to revolutionize museum design, breaking down the image of museums as elitist monuments and making them more accessible to the public at large. It is also a statement in favor of functional art – the colorful tubes that define the Pompidou Center are vital for the building to operate, and designate exactly what you’ll find inside them: yellow for electricity, red for transport, blue for water, and green for air.