Gallery of Evolution

This guide to Paris's Gallery of Evolution traces the hall from its 1889 debut, the same summer as the Eiffel Tower, through its quiet collapse by 1966, when the ceiling crumbled and its animals sat sealed in the dark for decades. It follows architects Paul Chemetov and Borja Huidobro's 1994 decision not to restore the space but to reimagine it, and the choices they made with light and staging on the ground floor beneath you. Stand back and watch how the room itself seems to move.