The Musée d'Orsay began as the Gare d'Orsay, a railway station built between 1898 and 1900 for the Paris-Orléans railway company, in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Victor Laloux, Lucien Magne and Émile Bénard were its architects, and the design was Beaux-Arts in style.
A barrel vault covers the great atrium, and the old train platforms form its central nave. In 1970 permission was given to demolish the station, but it was instead listed as a historic monument in 1978. That year a competition was won by ACT Architecture, whose plan added about 215,000 square feet (20,000 sq m) of new floor space on four floors. Gae Aulenti designed the interior.
The museum opened in December 1986. It holds mainly French art from 1848 to 1914, including the world's largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces.
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