MAIN CONCOURSE

The Main Concourse is heavenly, isn’t it? I don’t just mean the magnificent marble of the main concourse, reminiscent of an enormous ballroom, but also the delightful ceiling, in shades of sky blue and gold, where you can literally gaze at the stars. However, if you’re an astronomy enthusiast, you’ll already have noticed a potential error of “galactic” proportions: the constellations are the wrong way round!

The artist who painted the ceiling, Paul César Helleu, justified the mistake by saying that the fresco represented the view of the sky from God’s perspective…

AN INTERESTING FACT: if you look closely, you can spot another two elements on the ceiling that are “out of place”. The first is a hole above the zodiac sign of Pisces, caused by the tip of an American missile that was displayed in the hall at the end of the 1950s. The second, in a corner, is a dark, dirty piece of the surface, left there to show the layers of tar and nicotine that were removed during the last restoration work, at the dawn of the New Millennium, which restored the celestial vault to its natural splendor!