The centre Pompidou has been constructed between the 1971-1977 and was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, the British architect couple Richard Rogers and Sue Rogers, and the British structural engineer Edmund Happold and Irish structural engineer Peter Rice. It is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the IVe arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles and the Marais. It houses the Bibliotheque publique d'information, a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as Beaubourg. It is named after Georges Pompidou, who was president of France from 1969 to 1974, and was opened on January 31, 1977.

The Musee National d'Art Moderne is the French national modern art museum located on the fourth and fifth floors of the Centre. Organisationally, it is associated with IRCAM, the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, which is located nearby. The museum has a major international collection of modern art by artists such as Kandinsky, Matisse, Miro', Picasso, etc. Some of the art movements represented are Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. It has 50,000 works of art (including painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography), of which 1,500 to 2,000 are on public display. Also located here is the Centre of Industrial Design. 20th century architecture and design are covered. The museum has a rolling program of important temporary exhibitions.

In a city that is so steeped in history and resistant to change, the Centre George Pompidou created a bit of controversy when it was first constructed in the late 1970s. The architect's goal was to turn a normal building design inside out and they accomplished this by having the steel supports, water, electricity, gas, ventilation and all other support systems on the outside of the buildings walls. These systems are color coded to and make a nice visual design when viewed from the outside. Much like the controversy that was initially caused by the IM Pei pyramid at the Louvre, the Centre's naysayers soon were quieted once they realized the genius of the modern artistic structure.

The Centre houses a large library and also the National Galerie d'Art Moderne - which is why I chose to visit. I really enjoy contemporary art, and was expecting to see some Picasso's and other modern European masters. I however was pleasantly surprised by the amount of American contemporary art here - my favorites Lichtenstein and Warhol were well represented. Several of Warhol's famous shoe paintings and Lichtenstein's Hot Dog print were both high on my list of "must-sees". The Centre is also home to a litany of modern sculpture, and other modern modes of expression (eg. video, performance art, etc). There is plenty to visually please once inside, that's for sure.

I really like this museum's clean and open interior. Looking at the jumble of pipes on the outside, one might not expect to be greeted by an open floor plan with plenty of natural light and modern space enhancing techniques. Evidently, it was the goal of the design team to put the mess of the building on the outside to give visitors an uninterrupted expanse which to view artworks. Their plans worked.

The museum has several restaurants that can accommodate you whether you want a quick bite to eat (the Cafe) or a formal sit down meal (Restaurant Georges). The Centre also has several outdoor spaces that belong to it where art work and performance art are exhibited (both permanently and temporarily). With such a variety of activities in this expansive space, it's probably best to plan to spend at least a whole day here. Tickets are only about $10/person for admission making this one of the less expensive ways to take in modern art and some French culture at the same time.

The centre is a sensational looking building, particularly at night as its glass wall, separated by the steel frame gives a strange appearance to the building – almost incomplete in its completeness with its scaffolding suggesting that work is still in progress. It’s the only building, that I’m aware of, that has the main escalator on the outside. It seems to be mimicking the motions of a giant caterpillar as it crawls up the extremities of the structure. The bright colours almost scream at you but I’m assured that each colour is representational: blue for air and openness; yellow electricity and dynamism; green for fluidity of movement; red for flow and lack of restriction. Not sure about that myself, but the starkness of the primary colours certainly has an impact alongside the adjoining buildings and the simplicity of the complex building. The Pompidou centre seems constantly to contradict itself and challenge the senses.

I haven’t seen the building since it re-opened in 2000 – but I understand that its tired inside have been totally re-vamped and loads of new space has been created by moving the administration into another building

From the top floor you get a superb view, across the city’s rooftops, of Sacre-Coeur, the Eiffel tower, and Notre-Dame. Straight below you is the piazza with its static sculptures, water features and a multitude of street entertainers. It’s a busy area and from this height the hoards of tourists and entertainers seem to scurry in orderly fashion, like an army of ants, across the cobbled square.

But I shouldn’t forget the raison d’être of this building. It was conceived by President Georges Pompidou who was determined to establish a modern building in the centre of Paris to display a variety of contemporary and modern arts. Not only inert modern installations but art in its broadest terms – interactive and challenging. So the building itself was meant to challenge the environment and yet offer a real and tangible link with the local and wider community. Here President Pompidou wanted visual arts such as drama, theatre, cinema, and music to be available and he also had a vision that the building itself should be interactive and “talked about”. This man’s vision seems to have worked as millions of people have visited the centre since its official original opening back in 1977.

This is a building that you’ll experience and in all honesty you’ll either love it or hate it. I look forward to visiting it again to check out whether those early messages of freedom and openness are still as strong.