French president François Mitterrand inaugurated the Musée d'Orsay on the banks of the Seine, transforming the disused Gare d'Orsay — built for the 1900 World's Fair — into a museum devoted to art from 1848 to 1914. The renovation, led by architect Gae Aulenti, preserved the station's iron-and-glass grandeur while housing works by Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, and Cézanne.
The Gare d'Orsay had opened in 1900 as a marvel of engineering, its cast-iron frame and enormous glass barrel vault built to impress visitors arriving for the Paris World's Fair. But steam-era platforms proved too short for modern trains, and by the 1930s the station had fallen out of mainline use, serving briefly as a mailing center, a set for Orson Welles's film 'The Trial,' and even a venue for auctions.
In the 1970s, facing demolition plans reminiscent of the destruction of Les Halles, preservationists and the French government intervened. Italian architect Gae Aulenti was commissioned to reimagine the vast hall as exhibition space without erasing its industrial bones — the great clock and gilded ceiling ornaments remained visible above modern stone partitions.
When it opened on June 4, 1986, the museum filled a deliberate gap between the Louvre's older collections and the Pompidou Centre's contemporary art, becoming the definitive home for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. Millions now pass beneath its original station clock every year to see works that once struggled for critical acceptance in the same city.