The 2023 European Heritage Days were an opportunity to take a look at the inside of the Bourse de Commerce, which along with the Eiffel Tower was the main attraction at the 1889 Universal Exhibition. With its 40-metre-high metal and glass dome, the building was also a showcase for French steel engineering know-how at the time. This remarkable circular building, which dates back to the end of the 18th century (1767), served as a wheat market, a place for storing and trading wheat. To better preserve the grain, the originally open-air inner courtyard was covered with a wooden dome in 1782, then following a fire, a dome covered with copper foil was installed in 1813 by architect F-J Bélanger, replaced by glass in 1838 to improve light and ventilation.
In 1858, another fire and the development of flour mills on the outskirts of the capital in response to the increasing needs of a growing Parisian population (500,000 inhabitants in 1800, 1 million in 1840) put an end to the activity of the wheat market, which closed its doors in 1873. However, its central Paris location remained attractive for another activity then housed in the Palais Brongniart, that of a commodities exchange. Architect Henri Blondel, in charge of rebuilding and transforming the Wheat Exchange, retained the inner circular wall, the inner courtyard and the metal dome, the lower third of which he had bricked up to accommodate a vast painted panorama on the theme of "the adventure of trade and exchange on all continents, to the glory of a triumphant France, with folkloristic and colonial visions". Four artists shared the representation of the world under the direction of painter Alexis-Joseph Mazerolle, who placed allegories of the surrounding regions and continents at the four cardinal corners.
Starting from the North, four quarter-circles follow one another: 1- the Russian Empire and the Far North by Désiré François Laugée, 2- Europe and the Ottoman Empire by Hippolyte Lucas, 3- Asia and Africa by Georges-Victor Clairin, 4- America by Évariste Vital Luminais. The scale of the decor is impressive - 10m high by 140m long, or almost 1,400 square meters of canvas - as is the technique used. The artists first painted on strips of canvas, which were then glued, cut and incised to be fixed to the walls of the dome. Once the strips were in place, the artists joined them together and reworked some areas. Rich in detail, the composition invites us to take a long journey: a trip around the world, but also back in time, a return to the vision of France at the time, in the midst of industrial and commercial expansion at the end of the 19th century, and of faraway lands with their very different cultures and landscapes, a vision full of imagination and fascination mingled with the personal stylistic approach of each of the artists.
In the restored building, inaugurated on September 24 1889, a booming stock market business was launched, trading futures on products derived from agriculture: cereals, oil, sugar, alcohol and rubber. In 1998, the automation of markets put an end to stock market trading in the circular building, but it reinvented itself once again. And so, in 2021, after 3 years of intense restoration in collaboration with the Direction des Musées de France, and transformation under the direction of Japanese architect Tadao Ando, it became a museum of contemporary art, housing the French site of the Pinault Collection. As you enter the building, a dialogue begins, your gaze naturally turns to its light-filled core, the fresco reveals itself, a staircase gently winding around a concrete cylinder invites you to discover it and leads you to a footbridge from which, 9m above ground, you can admire it in its entirety.
You travel, as you please, to the four corners of the world, through the eyes, talents and imaginations of late 19th-century artists. The sky of the fresco blends into the Parisian sky, which invites itself into the building. A feat of architecture and engineering, Henri Blondel's glass roof has been fitted with brand-new double-glazing, preserving light intensity while protecting the fresco and the works on display in the rotunda from the sun's rays, and ensuring much better thermal performance for the building. A symbolic gesture, echoing the building's circularity, the 30m-diameter, 9m-high concrete cylinder placed at the centre of the building is at the heart of the past-present-future link that underpins T. Ando's design, creating a "passageway" between the old building and the new functions: it provides air circulation, houses the lighting fixtures, absorbs part of the rotunda's resonance ("sound traps" have been inserted into the concrete skin), accommodates an exhibition room and organises circulation routes to access the collection galleries.
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