Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration

You are standing before the Palais de la Porte Dorée, an architectural masterpiece of the Art Deco movement. Built in 1931 for the International Colonial Exhibition, the structure was originally intended to project the power and reach of the French colonial empire to millions of visitors. Its massive façade is wrapped in a twelve-hundred-square-meter bas-relief by sculptor Alfred Janniot, which depicts a stylized vision of colonial trade, fauna, and indigenous populations working for the metropole. Today, this imposing building serves a vastly different purpose as the home of the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration. The museum occupies this space to confront the country's complicated history of migration, essentially placing the story of those who moved to France within the very walls that were once built to celebrate the empire they emerged from.