The Metro didn't actually drop us off at the Pompidou Center, but rather south of our eventual destination, next to the Hôtel de Ville. Despite the name, the Hôtel de Ville isn't a place one would normally sleep at, but is instead the Paris town hall.

The building dates back to 1628, when a nearly 100-year-long construction project was completed. In 1835 two wings were added, giving the appearance seen now. However, in 1871 the building was burned during the Paris Commune (you may have detected a pattern by now – a pyromaniac must have been in charge), the bulk of the damage being done to the interior. The rebuilding of the interior took 19 years, and the building has since housed the administration of the city of Paris. It was also the spot where Charles de Gaulle announced the liberation of the city from the Nazis (not by him, though he may have neglected to mention this) in 1944. The crowd receiving this announcement was gathered in the square in front of the building, which is now a pleasant place frequented by street entertainers. It was once the site of a different popular form of entertainment, public executions, but these have pretty much stopped.

From the Hôtel de Ville we headed up the Rue du Renard a couple of blocks until we reached the backside of the Pompidou Center. This side of the building is notable for deliberately exposing the inner workings of the building, with the parts of the various systems color-coded (blue for air, green for fluids, yellow for electricity and red for movement and safety).

It's not notable for having an entrance, so we turned left to get around the building to where the front and the main entrance were. But on the way we were distracted by what appeared to be a colorful fountain on our left. We changed course to investigate.

The fountain, as it turns out, is called the Stravinsky Fountain, and is the work of two sculptors who installed it in 1983. The fountain holds sixteen moving, water-spouting figures which are themed to works by the 20th Century composer Igor Stravinsky, who lived in France in the 20's and 30's. The figures are of two very different styles, each style being contributed by a different sculptor: black, overtly mechanical sculptures were done by Jean Tinguely, and colorful, whimsical sculptures were the work of Niki de Saint Phalle.



We eventually found our way to the front of the Pompidou Center, which looks very different from the back.

The square in front of the building is popular with street performers, but we didn't pause to watch them, heading directly for the building entrance, where our Museum Passes got us in.

The Georges Pompidou Center, named for the President of France from 1969-74, opened in 1977 with the largest museum of modern art in Europe, a large library and a center for music and acoustic research. On the ground floor (actually on a lower level visible from the ground floor) we saw part of a live performance art presentation, with what appeared to be a group of female terrorists at a banquet table, all dressed up like Snow White.

We didn't spend much time on this, as they didn't seem to be involved in any coherent activity, and we were mainly interested in the museum. We headed upstairs, first to the fourth floor, where works from 1960 to the present are displayed. I don't know how representative of contemporary art the fourth floor of the Pompidou Center is, but I have to confess that I didn't get it, for the most part. There's a considerable amount of experimentation with non-traditional media, and I found some things sort of cute, others repulsive, and the rest mainly puzzling.

Clearly my expertise in things artistic is limited to nonexistent, but as an exercise, try casting your mind's eye a hundred years into the future, and imagine the following exchange between two friends promenading on a local skywalk in their levitron boots:

Harold: Last night, when I plugged into my brain socket, I chose to virtually experience visits to great works of art throughout human civilization.
Melvin: How clever of you! See anything you liked?
Harold: A few things – the reconstructed Colossus of Rhodes was pretty cool, and that Sistine Chapel thing was really colorful. But that 2010 black-and-white video of the naked woman with the barbed-wire hula-hoop! Now there's a masterpiece!

Judge the likelihood for yourself.

We continued upstairs to the fifth floor (with some relief, speaking for myself) and found it occupied by the 1905-to-1960 collection. I won't pretend that I fully understood all the Picassos, Matisses, Mirós, etc. etc., but they did seem to clearly be works of art. Well most of them, anyway.










One other thing we found on the fifth floor was a nice view of the Notre-Dame cathedral.

We took some pictures, ate some Pierre Hermé macarons and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next day's adventure, an expedition to the Palace of Versailles.