After hearing for many years how amazing it is, we finally made it to Musée d’Orsay.
Everybody was right!
Not only is this a stunning art museum, but it directly fed into Pieter’s love for train stations. He might have taken more photos of the architecture than anything else.
It is also a great example of what can be done with old stations to give them new life.
Inaugurated in 1900 for the World Fair, Orsay train station ran services to the capital for passengers from right across southwest France. Also housed within the building were a luxurious hotel and a grand reception room.
With the modernisation of trains, the station was gradually abandoned. In 1977, the French government decided to turn the building into a museum. The Musée d’Orsay was inaugurated in 1986. Through paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, photography and drawings, the museum presents the full diversity of artistic creation in the western world from 1848 to 1914 (from the Second Republic to the World War I).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_d%27Orsay
One more example of the ‘greenest’ Olympics so far.
The building project to redevelop the station into a museum (1983-1986) preserved this opulent space in the neo-eighteenth century style, with its mirrors reflecting a wealth of gilded stucco ornamen-tations, electric chandeliers, and crystal garlands. The pairs of faux marble columns are purely decorative as the whole building is supported by a metal framework. The decor designed by the architect was created in the workshop of the sculptor and interior designer Kulikowski, and Pierre Fritel painted the decorative schemes, The Chariot of Apollo, the allegories The Dance and The Seasons, and the grisailles, some of which bear the monogram P-O (the Paris-Orléans line).
