The lives of the Viaduc des Arts, when Paris reinvents itself

The viaduct is a work of art. Before paying homage to it by welcoming the craftsmen who make up France's prestige in terms of arts and crafts, the Viaduct bore another name and supported a train line.

A viaduct to link the capital

The Viaduc des Arts, before transporting the imagination of walkers, carried passengers who crossed Paris from the east. At that time, it was called the Bastille Viaduct. This one and a half kilometre long viaduct was then a railway bridge. The bridge was built by Emile Vuigner and Albert Bassompierre-Sewrin in the east of Paris in 1859, the date of its inauguration. This structure enabled millions of people to reach the capital from the eastern suburbs.
At the time, it enabled the Vincennes line to link the old Bastille station (destroyed in 1984 before the construction of the Bastille Opera House) with the La Varenne station in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés in the Val de Marne. Thus the Paris/Bastille-Varenne railway line functioned as a traffic artery for the inhabitants of Paris and the suburbs, before the poetic viaduct gave way to the prosaic RER A in the 1970s.

A viaduct to discover the capital and its craftsmen

It was in the early 1980s that the Bastille viaduct was reborn, and in a beautiful way, by becoming the showcase for the City of Paris' arts and crafts. It took ten years to rehabilitate the structure, transform it, magnify it and dedicate new functions to it. The architect Patrick Berger worked to forge a new destiny for this emblematic Parisian walkway.
In 1986, the Paris City Council decided to buy the abandoned structure and launch a rehabilitation project. The viaduct was transformed from a passageway into a place of life. The old railway line was converted into a planted promenade, while the lower part of the bridge, made up of vaults in pink brick and cut stone, was restored. Patrick Berger closes each of the vaults with large glass windows: the bridge's base will now be able to house workshops, showcases for the world of crafts, art and design.

From a functional role to an artistic lung for Paris

At its origins, the Bastille Viaduct served the urban planning of Paris anonymously and without being looked at. More than a century later, the transformation of this path, this route, into something completely different in the eyes of Parisians. By changing its skin, its name and its function, the Viaduc de Bastille, which has become the Viaduc des Arts, has become a creative and artistic path that charms by the gardens it carries on its back and seduces by the craftsmen it houses. The rehabilitation process of the Viaduc des Arts and its neighbourhood represents the potential of urban renewal. The Viaduc des Arts has become an aesthetic solution for a space, an apparently obsolete structure dating from the period of Parisian industrialisation.

What a transformation! What a life for an engineering structure! What a reinvention of this railway line that has become a figure of Parisian craftsmanship! Each vault is a place of expression of excellent know-how but also a production, presentation and sales workshop. And from being functional, the viaduct has become consubstantial with Parisian aesthetics; what a destiny!

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