Centre Pompidou Paris

The Centre Georges Pompidou is a very notable building that is located in the Beaubourg area of Paris. It stands near Les Halles and the Marais and it houses a vast public library and a modern art museum. Because of its location, the centre is often referred simply as "Beaubourg" by the locals. Some of the art movements represented in the museum include Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The museum has a total of 50,000 works of art which include various paintings, sculpture, drawings and photographs. There are close to two thousand items on public display there. The building structure of the Centre Pompidou is very distinctive and has been described by critics as "an oil refinery in the centre of the city". The colored external piping is one of the especially notable features of this building. The air conditioning ducts are painted blue and the water pipes are colored in green. The construction of the building is very transparent as the steel beams that make up the Pompidou Centre's framework are on the outside. The intention of the architects was to place all the service elements outside the building's framework and thereby turn the building "inside out". This is truly a sight to behold.