The Orsay Museum
The Orsay Museum was first designed as a train station for the World's Fair of 1900 by Victor Laloux, considered as one of the fashionable architects of the time. Up to 1939, Orsay was one of the busiest train stations of Paris; however it proved to be a structure little adaptable to modernisation. Hence its initial function was slowly abandoned and it was subsequently turned into a storehouse for cinema sets, and still later into an auction house. Finally in 1978 it was decided to convert the edifice into a museum dedicated to artworks of the second half of the 19th century. Gaé Aulenti, internationally renowned interior architect was commissioned to reshape the entire indoor space. She chose Buxy stone for the flooring and interior cladding. The construction site required 30,000m² of stone to cover 16,853m² of exhibition space.
