Built for Paris’s 1900 World’s Fair, the Grand Palais pairs an immense glass-roofed nave with a sculpted Beaux-Arts exterior. Repeatedly adapted for exhibitions, wartime service, sport, and public culture, it reopened fully after restoration in 2025.
Quick facts
The Grand Palais opened for Paris’s 1900 Exposition Universelle after construction began in 1897; four architects—Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, Albert Thomas, and Charles Girault—shared the design.
During the First World War, the Grand Palais was requisitioned and adapted into a military hospital, with medical care and rehabilitation workshops for wounded soldiers.
After partial reopening for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic events, the fully restored Grand Palais reopened to the public in June 2025.
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Look up through the Grand Palais’s great glass roof and the building’s original ambition becomes clear: this was a machine for gathering people, art, and new ideas beneath one enormous span. The monument stands in Paris’s 8th arrondissement, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine, and belongs to the city grouping “Paris” in this catalog. It is distinct from the Petit Palais across the avenue, though both were built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle.
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Petit Palais
Built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, Charles Girault’s Petit Palais became the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts in 1902. Its curved galleries circle a garden court, while the collection grew from municipal purchases into a broad public art museum through major bequests.
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