Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Stand for a moment between the two wings, under the long row of stone columns. The pale limestone holds the light, and the air smells faintly of the river below. Sound behaves strangely here. Traffic on the quay softens, footsteps echo off the paving, and voices drift across the open terrace. Ahead, steps fall away toward the Seine. Across the water, the Eiffel Tower rises above the rooftops. This is the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, and the building around you is older than the museum itself.

This building is called the Palais de Tokyo. It went up for the International Exposition of 1937, a great world fair devoted to art and technology in modern life. Europe was tense that year. National pavilions faced each other along the river, and each country tried to show its power. This palace was meant to last after the fair closed. It was planned as a home for modern art, and that purpose has stayed with it ever since.

The name surprises many visitors. Why Tokyo, in the middle of Paris? The answer lies outside the building. The riverside road below was once called the Quai de Tokio, and the palace took its name from that street. After the Second World War, the quay was renamed in honour of New York. The building kept its old name. So a Parisian palace still carries the name of a Japanese capital, as a souvenir of an old street sign.

The architecture belongs to its decade. It is classical in outline but stripped of ornament. You see clean columns, broad flat walls, and a strong sense of symmetry. The two wings face each other across a terrace and a long reflecting pool. Today they house two separate institutions. The western wing holds the Palais de Tokyo, a centre for contemporary art. The eastern wing belongs to the City of Paris, and that is where the modern art museum lives.

Look for the large bronze figure on the terrace. This is La France, by the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. She stands tall and calm, armed and watchful, looking out over the city. Bourdelle worked in the generation after Rodin, and his figures feel more architectural, more like columns of bronze. Around the facades, carved reliefs show figures from myth and allegory. The building was designed for art outside as well as inside.

The museum opened its doors in 1961. Its collection belongs to the city, and it covers the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Many artists worked in Paris in the early twentieth century, and many came from abroad. Historians call this loose community the School of Paris. Their work sits here beside the bold colours of the Fauves — the so-called wild beasts — and the broken, layered forms of the Cubists. Later rooms carry the story into recent decades.

Now for the first great surprise. Deep inside the museum is one of the largest paintings in the world. Raoul Dufy painted it for the electricity pavilion at that same exhibition of 1937. It is called La Fée Électricité, the Electricity Fairy. It is made from hundreds of panels, and it wraps around an entire curved room. You do not look at this painting. You stand inside it.

Dufy tells the story of electricity, from ancient thinkers to the inventors of the modern age. Dozens of scientists appear in a long procession, each one shown with care. Above them, the colours float freely across the outlines of the figures, in Dufy's light, airy manner. Near the end, a power station hums with energy. The mood is optimistic, almost joyful. Remember the date, though. This hopeful picture of progress was painted only two years before Europe went to war.

The second surprise waits in another room. Henri Matisse painted a huge mural on the theme of dance for an American collector, Albert Barnes. It was meant for a room with arched windows. During the work, Matisse found that his measurements were wrong. So he started again. The museum holds two versions of this dance, and you can compare them. The first was unfinished for decades, and it came to light again only later.

Stand in front of the Matisse panels and follow the bodies. They stretch, leap and tumble across bands of flat colour. Matisse cut and arranged painted paper to plan the composition, and the shapes feel sharp, almost sculpted. The arches above shape the whole design. Even without the original room, you can feel how the figures were made to fit the curves. The work shows a painter who thought about walls, light and space together.

The museum also carries a darker story. In 2010, a thief broke in at night and stole five paintings, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Modigliani and Léger. Newspapers called him Spider-Man, because he climbed into buildings. The theft became one of the most talked-about art crimes of its time. The paintings were never recovered. Their absence is a quiet reminder that museums protect fragile, irreplaceable things.

The building itself has needed care too. It went through a major renovation, and reopened in 2019 with refreshed galleries and better spaces for visitors. Inside, the rooms are generous and calm. High windows bring in daylight, and big walls give large canvases room to breathe. The museum also stages temporary exhibitions, so the art you meet today may not be here next season. Every visit can be a little different.

When you leave, walk back out onto the terrace. Pause by the reflecting pool and watch the columns repeat themselves in the water. Listen to the skateboarders who often gather on the stone below. Look again across the river at the tower. It was built for an earlier world fair. Two exhibitions, decades apart, still face each other across the Seine. And between them, quietly, the city keeps its art.