Centre Pompidou Night of Museums

June 26th, 2010

Paris's brilliant cultural centres will encourage you to look with fresh eyes.

The trendsetter is the Centre Pompidou. Designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, its glass envelope with coloured service pipes holds a modern art museum, library, performance space and repertory cinema.

More recently, Jean Nouvel has built the Musée du Quai Branly to house a 300,000-strong collection of Arts Premiers from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas. With adventurous displays, a prime riverside site near the Eiffel Tower, lush gardens and an open-air amphitheatre, it transports you into a series of new worlds.

The museums are among the venues that open for free on the pan-European, biannual Night of Museums (www.nuitdesmusees.culture.fr).