Discover the monument

Inaugurated on May 6 1931, the Colonial Exposition attempted to promote an image of imperial France at the very height of its power. Designed in the form of a huge festival,  a true city within the city, the exposition stretched over more than 1200 metres, crisscrossed with more than 10 kilometres of signposted paths.

The main vocation of the Palais de la Porte Dorée was to be a “museum of the colonies”, which was to represent the territories, the history of the colonial conquest and its effect on the arts. Viewed unanimously as one of Paris’s most remarkable buildings of the 1930s, today it serves as a precious testimony to the museographic design of an era when this type of establishment played a central role in the dissemination and sharing of knowledge.

In the axis of the entrance door is the former festival hall, which hosted numerous festivities in 1931. In the south-east and south-west corners, two salons, the Asia Salon and the Africa Salon, have been listed as historic monuments of the Palais de la Porte Dorée since 1987.