Museum · France · Restored

Petit Palais

The Petit Palais is a Beaux-Arts art museum in Paris built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle and now housing the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts. The trapezoidal building is centred on a semicircular peristyled courtyard and dominated on the main façade by a monumental arched porch surmounted by a dome.

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Photograph via Wikimedia Commons

First raised

1902

Its prime

1900

Today

Restored

As it stood in 1900

What Petit Palais looked like in its prime.

Broad light‑coloured cut-stone façades extend across a long main front punctuated by a central archivolt and a shallow slate/zinc dome; a broad flight of steps leads to a gilded iron entrance under a sculpted tympanum. The façades are rhythmically ordered by composite columns and balustrades, with corner pavilions and tall arched windows. Inside, marble-lined walls, mosaic floors and skylit galleries encircle a semicircular peristyle courtyard with pink Vosges granite coupled columns and gilt-bronze capitals.

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10 places to explore in 1900.

The record describes 10 distinct spots at Petit Palais, including 6 interiors: entrance rotunda, main gallery beneath the dome, semicircular peristyle courtyard and garden and more. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more photos, more angles and more of the immersive experience.

Approach from the Avenue (main façade)Main steps and portalEntrance rotundaMain gallery beneath the domeSemicircular peristyle courtyard and gardenInner skylit painting galleriesOuter galleries with arched windowsDome and lantern (exterior close-up)Rear garden and café terraceEntrance to amphitheatre beneath the garden

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