It was built to sell things, it failed, it was pulled down, and it was put back. Today it holds the two national institutes that train the people who look after French heritage.
At a glance
The Galerie Colbert is a covered arcade off the rue Vivienne, near the old Bibliothèque nationale. It was built in the 1820s, in the generation of glass-roofed Paris arcades, and it never prospered in the way its neighbour the Galerie Vivienne did. It was demolished in 1983 and rebuilt, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France acquired it. Since the early 2000s it has housed the Institut national d’histoire de l’art and the Institut national du patrimoine, the school that trains France’s curators and conservators.
Key facts
- Built: 1826–27, to plans by Jean Billaud (some sources date the design to 1823–25)
- Demolished: 1983, after long neglect, and afterwards rebuilt
- Owner: the Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Occupants: the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) and the Institut national du patrimoine (INP)
- INHA created: by decree of 12 July 2001; the idea was first put forward in 1973 by Jacques Thuillier
- INP in the building: recorded there from 2004
- GPS: 48.8668, 2.3394 · Open in Google Maps
History
Paris built its glass-roofed arcades in the decades after the Revolution, when a covered passage lined with shops was the newest idea in retail. The Galerie Colbert went up in the 1820s beside the Galerie Vivienne, and it was always the lesser of the two: the Vivienne drew the crowds, the Colbert did not.
It declined for a century and a half. In 1983 it was demolished, and then rebuilt — a sequence that is more common in Paris than the city’s reputation suggests, and which leaves a building that is both old and new. The Bibliothèque nationale de France took it on.
Its second life is academic. The Institut national d’histoire de l’art, created by decree in July 2001 after an idea first raised by Jacques Thuillier in 1973, took the building together with the Institut national du patrimoine, which is recorded there from 2004. The INP is where France trains the curators of its public collections and the conservators who treat them.
Who is there now
Two institutions, both national and both concerned with the same objects from different ends. The INHA is a research body for the history of art, with a library built on the collection of Jacques Doucet. The INP is a school: it trains the conservateurs du patrimoine who run French museums, archives and monuments, and the restorers who work on the objects themselves. An arcade built for shopkeepers now holds the training ground of the French heritage profession.
What you see
A straight covered passage with a rotunda at its centre: a ring of columns under a glass dome, with a bronze group in the middle and a polished floor that throws the light back up. The shopfronts are gone and the arcade reads as an interior street belonging to the institutions on either side, which is what it now is.
Sources & resources
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