When Chanel returned to the Grand Palais for its runway show last October, there was the collective feeling that the house had come home after four years displaced. But the reopening of the building’s soaring glass-ceiling nave, timed to the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, marked only the first of two major phases of the Grand Palais’s monumental restoration.
As of this week, the second phase is complete enough that visitors will now arrive via the main entrance on the refurbished Square Jean Perrin, where allegorical statues adorning a fountain are gleaming white. Once inside, they will behold the splendor of the building—both its original architecture and reimagined spaces—like never before.
Led by Chatillon Architectes, the project is particularly remarkable for the fact that it involved no additional building. Yet there is a vast amount of new, usable space—or, at least, space that the public is able to experience for the first time.
Beyond the entrance is a 3,000-square-meter area where people can wander freely (and for free)—one that has not existed since the building was divided into three sections in 1937. Here, luminous panels running the length of the ceiling create an almost futuristic feel amid the circa-1900 riveted steel beams painted reseda green—a shade as signature to the Grand Palais as orange is to Hermès. There is a cafeteria on the mezzanine, a modular boutique, and seating staggered throughout—all of the fixtures and furniture realized by L’Atelier Senzu, known for its ecological approach to design.
The main attraction, however, is a view of the nave through three floor-to-ceiling windows. It is framed by an enormous curtain of nine suspended panels in gradient green, conceived under the direction of Studio MTX (one of the 12 houses within Chanel’s artisanal network, Le19M) with additional decorative elements from six other ateliers. Conveniently and cleverly, the curtain will remain closed when Chanel is preparing for its shows.
The Grand Palais was conceived by a collective of architects—Henri Deglane, Louis-Albert Louvet, Albert-Félix-Théophile Thomas, and Charles Giraud—as a stage for French patrimony and culture when Paris hosted the Universal Exhibition in 1900. It also encompassed the Palais d’Antin, which later became the Palais de la découverte, a kind of science discovery museum that remained open, albeit tired, until the renovations began in 2021.
Around this time last year, I was invited for a site visit with François Chatillon as phase one was nearly done. He explained the importance of restoring the continuity and circulation across the entire 72,000-square-meter complex. It would, he thought, establish a new sense of modernity at the Grand Palais, along with all the technical and logistical upgrades (a new lower level to accommodate groups, new locker areas, and allover safety and accessibility modifications, among them) that had become imperative. The project has cost close to €500 million—including an initial pledge of €25 million from Chanel, which has renewed its partnership with an additional €30 million.
Yesterday was the highly anticipated preview, and it had the frenetic energy of a Jacques Tati film. Clusters of journalists moved like schools of fish while workers added final coats of paint or whizzed through with building materials, construction noise humming in the background as the curtain revealed the nave like a stage set. And every few minutes, an installation of pennant flags by contemporary artists Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage were set in sinuous mechanical motion from the ceiling—a nod to the “Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tingueley, Pontus Hulten” exhibition that opens in the adjacent gallery spaces next week as a coproduction between the GrandPalaisRMN (the museum arm of the Grand Palais) and the Centre Pompidou. With the Pompidou about to undergo its own massive renovation, the Grand Palais will play host to its programming over the next few years. (As Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon assured journalists, “We are not closing, we are metamorphosing.”)
Was Chatillon feeling emotional with the activity all around? “No, not right now,” he replied. “The emotion came two weeks ago when we cleaned up the Palais d’Antin and I saw the light come through for the first time.”
Although that baroque-style rotunda has been there all along, it will surely be a glorious discovery for most visitors as they gaze up in wonder at the decorative sculptures or down at an intricate mosaic floor swirling with acanthus leaves. It’s only a matter of time—perhaps September—before a major fashion house stages its show here.
Meanwhile, the curtain for the central axis—running eight meters from floor to ceiling and 15 meters in length—marks the first time that seven houses from Le19M have worked together on an architectural project. Mathieu Bassée, artistic director of Studio MTX, described the toile’s graphic and gradient green pattern as a “luminous rainfall,” saying, “It plays with the building’s verticality and the way light comes from above.” Interspersed with panels of gold leaf are 70 dimensional bands covered in delicate feather marquetry, smocking, hammered metal, wisps of tweed, intricate embroidery, and even the perforated leather of brogue shoes by the various ateliers. All told, it took 720 hours to produce—900 if factoring in the design, prototyping, testing, and more processes.
As striking as the curtain is, Chatillon (who will now shift his focus to another historical monument, the Louvre) hopes the windows will remain uncovered as much as possible. “The challenge is to resist the tendency to close everything off,” he said. “I won’t be around to enforce it, but I’ve fought to keep it open.”
This, he believes, is consistent with his vision of the 21st-century Grand Palais—one that embraces the poetics of space. “Space is the truest luxury,” Chatillon noted. “Luxury at its most pure is nature, like being alone in the mountains. In cities, we can create vast spaces that feel natural.”
From the Salon Seine—an area oriented toward kids—to the reopened galleries (featuring two more exhibitions, one dedicated to art brut and another to royal tapestries), the Grand Palais exemplifies generosity on a grand scale. “We can keep reminding people of this through architecture just by opening it up,” Chatillon insisted. Mission accomplished.