Museum
Musée d'Orsay
Esplanade Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 75007 Paris
Beaux-Arts railway terminus turned Impressionist shrine, with a soaring iron-and-glass nave and monumental clocks.
This guide to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris opens with Orson Welles wandering the empty railway station at dawn in 1962, scouting a location for his film of Kafka's The Trial. From there it traces the building's own strange life: Victor Laloux's showpiece station for the 1900 World's Fair, its trains stopped by 1939, and the demolition permit that nearly turned it into a hotel in 1970. Listen for how a wave of public anger changed its fate.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.