Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie

This guide to the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris starts with a slaughterhouse abandoned mid-construction in 1973, its steel skeleton rusting beside the canal de l'Ourcq for seven years. You'll hear how architect Adrien Fainsilber won the 1980 competition to convert it, and the unusual choices he made with the old foundations and the building's glass walls before François Mitterrand opened the doors in March 1986. Listen for how that opening night lined up with a spacecraft racing toward Halley's Comet.