Renowned Pompidou Centre shuts for 5-year refit

France (AFP) — Paris’ Pompidou Centre, home to one of the world’s biggest modern art collections, shuts its doors to visitors on Monday for at least five years, with an overhaul costing almost half a billion euros now set to begin in earnest.

The museum is a cornerstone of Parisian cultural life, drawing millions of visitors every year who come to admire its art as well as its famed architecture of exposed ventilation and escalators.

Designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers and named after former president Georges Pompidou, the center opened its doors in 1977 and is now set to undergo a major modernization.

“I’m a little sad because it feels so strange to think that for at least five years, we won’t come back anymore. It’s a place I love, a place my children and my five-year-old granddaughter love too,” Claudie Rocard-Laperrousaz, a 65-year-old artist and photographer, told AFP.

The museum’s permanent collection closed for visitors back in March, when specialists began to remove works from display, including paintings by the likes of Francis Bacon or Frida Kahlo and the sculptures of Marcel Duchamp.

Temporary exhibitions have remained open and Monday was the final day for visitors to see the last such show, a retrospective of the German artist Wolfgang Tillmans, until the center reopens around 2030.

The museum will stay open exceptionally until 11 p.m. (2100 GMT) with free entry, although it is also due to host a musical and artistic show from 22-25 October to mark a Paris contemporary art week.

The closure is also set to hit the area’s shops and restaurants, which rely on the landmark to draw customers.

“We are very worried. It’s the whole neighborhood that’s going to change,” said Alexandre Mahfouz, the manager of a gallery opposite the entrance of the Pompidou Centre and president of the neighborhood’s business owners’ collective.

The state of Paris’s often-crowded cultural attractions has caused concern recently, with the head of the Louvre warning earlier this year that the world’s most-visited museum was suffering from water damage, poor maintenance and long queues.