Gare d'Orsay
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Gare d'Orsay is a former Parisian railway station and hotel, built in 1900 to designs by Victor Laloux, Lucien Magne and Émile Bénard; it served as a terminus for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (Paris-Orléans Railway). It was the first electrified urban rail terminal in the world, opened May 28, 1900, in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. [1] It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939, by which time the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services; it closed to long-distance traffic in 1939, though some suburban trains continued to use it, and the station's hotel closed at the beginning of 1973.
The former station was used as a collection point for the dispatch of parcels to prisoners of war during the Second World War, and after the war as a reception centre for liberated prisoners on their return; a plaque on the side of the building facing the River Seine commemorates this latter use.
It served as the setting for several films, including Orson Welles' version of Franz Kafka's The Trial. It was at the Gare d'Orsay that General Charles de Gaulle held the press conference at which he announced his "availability to serve his country" (effectively placing himself at the head of a coup d'état) on 19 May 1958, ushering in the end of the French Fourth Republic.
In 1977 the French Government decided to convert the station to a museum. The building was listed as a historical monument in 1978 and re-opened as the Musée d'Orsay in December 1986. The chief architect for the conversion was the Italian Gae Aulenti. There is a huge clock which still works in the main terminal of the museum.
