Petit Palais

The Petit Palais is a former pavilion of the aligned in Paris World Exhibition of 1900. It was built 1897-1900 and now houses the municipal museum of Fine Arts ( Musee des Beaux- Arts de la ville de Paris).

History

Between the Seine and the Champs -Élysées, the two exhibition buildings which are now known as the Grand Palais and Petit Palais emerged. While the Grand Palais organizes art and painting exhibitions, are the paintings and sculptures exhibited at the Petit Palais, which were bought in 1870 by the city of Paris or commissioned.

Charles Girault was the architect of the buildings constructed on the processing performed in the 1900 World's Fair in Belle Époque style, neo-baroque building. With its lavish wall paintings and its gilded wrought iron entrance gate, it houses since 1902, the art collections in the city. The facades of the semi-circular building largely consist of windows.

The willed by Girault large windows had but soft over the decades wooden partitions and concrete walls. They wanted to protect the masterpieces of the incident light. Thus, the Petit Palais was a dark and narrow Museum.

Renovation

With more than 72 million euros has been completely refurbished the Petit Palais from 2000 to 2005. The Art Museum is once again one of the architectural jewels of Paris. Because behind the false walls and pulled the original structure was completely intact, architect Philippe Chaix could bring the Petit Palais almost back to its original state. The museum was thereby increased from 15000 to 22000 square meters of exhibition space. The windows of the exhibition rooms go almost all out on the patio, so that falls on the patio light into the building.

New are the exhibition halls in the basement, where, among other things, the portraits and busts of the painter and sculptor Jean -Baptiste Carpeaux are. In the rooms there are paintings by Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet and Auguste Rodin. In the hall Louis VI. are precious ceramics and furniture.

The department " Courbet and Realism " is the large-scale oil painting " firemen rushing to a fire ."