Bleisure: Cultural directory in the making

Review The victory of Samothrace at the Louvre, The origin of the world in Orsay or Water lilies at the Orangerie offers visitors to the capital intense aesthetic pleasure. Yet Paris - is it still possible? - continues to expand its cultural repertoire. In 2015, the Gustave Moreau museum got a facelift, as did the Bourdelle museum and the Musée de l'Homme. Since last spring, access to the dome of the Panthéon has been possible after many months of renovation and the work of the artist JR, offering a new way of discovering Paris by climbing to the top of the building constructed between 1764 and 1790 by Jacques-Germain Soufflot. Another remarkable new feature is the reopening this September of the Musée Maillol. Conversely, the Musée Carnavalet has closed its doors, to be enlarged and embellished by 2020. The same fate awaits the Théâtre de la Ville and the Théâtre du Châtelet, which will no doubt go several years without performances before re-emerging in the limelight...

But the real news, and not the rediscoveries, are also arriving in close ranks... First of all, we're dying of impatience to see - and above all breathe - the perfume museum at the end of the year, in an 18th-century mansion on the Faubourg Saint Honoré. After that, 2017 will be one surprise after another. At the beginning of the year, the Monnaie de Paris will unveil new boutiques, as well as a 500 m² Zen garden and a café orchestrated by Guy Savoy. Meanwhile, the Lafayette Anticipation Foundation for Contemporary Art will open its doors in the Marais district, on rue du Plâtre. Designed by the firm of architect Rem Koolhaas, the space will offer 2,500 sq. metres of exhibition space in two buildings: a former BHV warehouse dating from 1891, and an all-glass, all-height creation. Then in the spring, the Cité musicale de l'île Seguin, designed by the Franco-Japanese architectural duo of Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, will open its doors. The island, long home to Renault's historic headquarters, is also eagerly awaiting the opening of the R4 visual arts centre, a sort of micro-city dedicated to contemporary artistic expression and designed by Jean Nouvel.

YVES SAINT LAURENT AT THE MUSEUM

And there's more to come, with plans already announced for next year's Yves Saint Laurent museum, housed in the fashion house's historic building on Avenue Marceau. The Hôtel de la Marine, on Place de la Concorde, is also set to open to the public as a museum. Also eagerly awaited, but for 2018, the Pinault Paris collection is preparing to move into the former Bourse de Commerce, with the Japanese architect Tadao Ando in charge of its refurbishment. Looking further ahead, beyond 2020, we can anticipate many more spiritual, intellectual, visual and gustatory delights: there is talk of a permanent fashion museum under the Palais Galliera, a mathematics museum in the Latin Quarter, a Cité de l'économie in a listed building dating from 1882 in the heart of the 17th arrondissement, and most tantalisingly of the creation of a Cité de la gastronomie at Rungis...

NOTEBOOK

LE PANTHÉON - CENTRE DES MONUMENTS NATIONAUXInternet : www.paris-pantheon.fr or www.monuments-nationaux.fr THE PERFUME MUSEUMInternet : www.musee-du-parfum.fr LAFAYETTE ANTICIPATION - Galeries Lafayette Corporate Foundation, Internet: lafayetteanticipation.squarespace.com PARIS CURRENCYInternet : www.monnaiedeparis.fr CITÉ MUSICALEInternet: cite-musicale-ile-seguin.hauts-de-seine.fr R4, Internet: www.r4-ileseguin.com YVES SAINT LAURENT MUSEUMInternet : www.fondation-pb-ysl.net HOTEL DE LA MARINEInternet : www.hotel-de-la-marine.paris PALAIS GALLIERAInternet : www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr CITECO, Internet :www.citeco.fr