Walking inside the painting
Images cover the walls, the floor and your clothes.
Caroline Léna Becker — CC BY 3.0 · DarDarCH — CC BY-SA 4.0 · DarDarCH — CC BY-SA 4.0 · DarDarCH — CC BY-SA 4.0
An 1835 **iron foundry** in the eleventh arrondissement, left derelict for decades, then converted in **2018** into the first large digital art centre in Paris. The idea is simple and its effect considerable: a vast industrial hall with walls ten metres high and a wide floor, onto which **dozens of projectors** throw images covering every surface — walls, floor and pillars — with moving paintings set to music. You walk inside the work rather than standing in front of it, and the colours appear on your clothes and your face. The programmes are **seasonal and change**: they usually turn on one artist or school — Klimt, Van Gogh, Chagall, Monet and others — and run in a loop of roughly thirty to forty-five minutes, which you can enter at any point and stay as long as you like. ⚠ This is **not a museum** and shows no original works: it is a digital production built from images of paintings. Anyone after the real painting goes to the Orsay; anyone wanting a **sensory experience** finds it here — and it works particularly well with children and teenagers.
Images cover the walls, the floor and your clothes.
Ten-metre walls of a nineteenth-century foundry.
Klimt, Van Gogh, Chagall and Monet in different seasons.
38 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris
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**No, and it isn't meant to.** There is not one original work here — what you see is digital images enlarged, animated, cut and set to music. The value is **sensory rather than artistic**: being inside the colour, motion and sound instead of standing before a frame. Anyone who wants to see Van Gogh's actual brushstroke and the thickness of the paint belongs at the **Musée d'Orsay**, for which there is no substitute. The two don't compete: visit Orsay for the art and this for the experience — preferably in that order.
Yes, and it is among the most successful choices in Paris with them — because it **doesn't ask them to be quiet or queue in front of a painting**. They walk, sit on the floor and watch the colours move over themselves, the music holds them, and the loop is short. ⚠ But note two things: **the sound is loud and the lights move and sometimes flash**, which can distress very young children or anyone sensitive to light or noise. And **seating is scarce**, so most people are on the floor. Book an early slot to avoid the crush.