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The Centre Pompidou (French pronunciation: [sɑ̃tʁ pɔ̃pidu]), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (English: National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers, Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini. It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the centre is known locally as Beaubourg (IPA: [bobuʁ]). It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The centre had 1.5 million visitors in 2021, up by 65 percent from 2020, but a considerable drop from 2019 due to closings caused by the COVID pandemic. It has had over 180 million visitors since 1977 and more than 5,209,678 visitors in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum. The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is 7.6 m (25 ft) tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012.
