Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration

The building you are approaching is the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a masterwork of Art Deco architecture that holds a complex history. Constructed for the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition, its exterior features a massive, twelve-hundred-square-meter bas-relief by the sculptor Alfred Janniot. This intricate carving portrays a romanticized, idealized version of the French colonial empire, showing exotic wildlife and ships designed to project French power to the world. Today, this same space houses the National Museum of the History of Immigration, which turns the building's original purpose on its head by critically examining the very movements of people that once fueled the empire and have since shaped the modern French nation.