The Centre Pompidou
Inside-out icon with color-coded pipes, Europe's largest modern art collection, and rooftop panoramas.
Location
About this audio guide
The Centre Pompidou's guide starts in July 1971, when a young Renzo Piano presented his competition-winning design in Paris and the crowd threw tomatoes. He and partner Richard Rogers had just beaten six hundred and eighty-one entries with a plan to turn the building inside out, its pipes and ducts color-coded on the exterior. The guide follows the backlash from critics who compared it to an oil refinery ahead of its 1977 opening. See if you can guess what each colored tube carries before the guide tells you.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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