The Gare d'Orsay () is a former Paris railway station and hotel, built in 1900 to designs by Victor Laloux, Lucien Magne and Émile Bénard, which served as a terminus for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (Paris–Orléans railway). It was the first electrified urban terminal station in the world, and opened 28 May 1900, in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle.
The station was closed in 1939, eventually being reopened in December 1986 as the Musée d'Orsay, an art museum. The museum is served by the eponymous RER station.
History
Palais d'Orsay
thumb|The burnt-out ruins of the Palais d'Orsay|left
In the early 19th century, the site was occupied by military barracks and the , a governmental building originally built for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The palace was erected over a period of 28 years, from 1810 to 1838, by the architects Jacques-Charles Bonnard and later Jacques Lacorné. After completion, the building was occupied by the Cour des Comptes and the Council of State.
After the fall of the French Second Empire in 1870, the Paris Commune briefly took power from March to May 1871. The archives, library, and artworks were moved to Palace of Versailles and eventually both the Conseil and the Cour des Comptes were rehoused in the Palais-Royal. On the night of 23–24 May 1871, the largely empty Palais d'Orsay was burned by soldiers of the Paris Commune, along with the Tuileries Palace and several other public buildings associated with Napoleon III, an event which was described by Émile Zola in his 1892 novel, La Débâcle. Following the fire, the burnt-out walls of the palace lay derelict for almost 30 years.
Museum
In the 1960s, the appetite for replacing old buildings with modernist structures was gathering pace, and historic sites such as Les Halles market were being demolished. Plans were drawn up to demolish the Gare d'Orsay and replace it with a new building, and proposals for an airport, a government ministry building and a school of architecture were considered. Permission was granted to construct a hotel on the site, but in 1971 Jacques Duhamel, the minister of culture under President Georges Pompidou, intervened. The station building was in a sensitive location on the Seine facing the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre, and it was feared that a modern building would not fit in with the surrounding architecture. In 1973 the Gare d'Orsay was designated a protected Monument historique.
thumb|Main exhibition hall of the Musée d'Orsay (opened 1986)
At the time, the French Ministry of Culture was facing problems with a lack of exhibition space, particularly in the Musée du Jeu de Paume and the Louvre. With the opening of the Centre Pompidou in 1977 to house modern art, it was felt that there was a lack of provision for exhibiting art of the 19th century. The paintings curator of the Louvre, Michel Laclotte, proposed the creation of a new museum to display 19th century artworks from the Post-romanticism era up to Fauvism, and in particular the large collection of Impressionist art from the Jeu de Paume.
The project to convert the disused railway station into a museum was announced in 1978 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The architects for the conversion were the architects' firm ACT led by . The Italian architect Gae Aulenti developed the interior design of the gallery. The building reopened as the Musée d'Orsay in December 1986. The former train shed now serves as the grand hall of the museum, with large works by sculptors such as Auguste Rodin, Jean-Joseph Perraud and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux on permanent display, overlooked by the large, ornate station clock. The former railway hotel now holds the paintings collection, displaying works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh among others.