The Coolest New Museum in the World Gives Paris Even More Travel Cachet: 19th Century Factory Transformed Into Dazzling Digital Art Center

Imagine stepping into a restored 19th-century foundry in Paris to find yourself engulfed in sumptuous visions of fine art projected to monumental proportions all around you, accompanied by beautiful music.

Whether you’re a seasoned art connoisseur, accustomed to viewing masterpieces in traditional venues, or don’t routinely visit museums or galleries, l’Atelier des Lumieres will give you a whole new perspective on art when Paris’ first digital art center opens April 13.

Thanks to high-tech multimedia equipment, featuring 140 video projectors plus a spatialized sound system, visitors will be surrounded by gigantic digitized depictions of great art, as thousands of images cover floors, ceilings and walls inside the immense structure. The all-encompassing visual experience will be complemented by the sounds of original musical scores emanating from 50 speakers.

Although it has yet to open, l’Atelier des Lumieres has already been billed as one of the top new travel experiences in 2018 by Lonely Planet.

And Conde Nast Traveler predicts that even the savviest Paris expert will get a “new artistic thrill” from what “promises to be the coolest new destination this side of the Right Bank.”

Atelier des Lumieres will include two areas for visitors: La Halle and Le Studio.

For the opening, La Halle will feature a long program focusing on 19th-century Vienna Secession artists Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Egon Schiele (1890-1918), and a shorter program on Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), an Austrian-born New Zealand artist and architect who came after and drew inspiration from the two rebels. Le Studio will feature contemporary work by experienced or emerging artists.

As a timely prep course, and a lead to a great side trip, I recommend reading Cath Pound’s eye-opening BBC story “Klimt and Schiele: the artists who shocked Europe,” keying off the exhibitions being held this year on the two and their contemporaries at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

From the moment I opened the Atelier website, I was transfixed by the dramatically magnified images of Klimt’s exotic depictions of females, two of whom are ensconced in large, framed posters on my apartment walls. I brought the two posters back from a Klimt retrospective exhibition in a museum in Munich many years ago.

When I saw the original paintings in that museum for the first time, I was mesmerized by the artist’s mystical representations of each elegant figure, the shimmering gold tones, the elaborate symbolism, and the attention to detail, which I continue to admire every time I look at these treasured souvenirs.

The two posters are much bigger than the originals, as I recall. Looking at these enlargements helps me appreciate how the far greater magnification of such ravishing masterpieces in a high-resolution digital format would bring out all their magnificent features, providing a powerful multisensory experience evoking a theatrical production.

It’s fitting that this avant-garde new Paris attraction is located in the trendy 11th arrondissement (district), at 38-40 rue Saint-Maur. Check the museum website for directions via bus or Metro and information on the reasonably priced ticket categories.

It should come as no surprise that the French, long famous for their command of the fine art of presentation, have come up with yet another good reason for travelers to feed their wanderlust by booking for Paris this year to see something new, unique, and undeniably remarkable.

In fact, with the impending debut of l’Atelier des Lumieres and plenty of other special attractions, Paris — ranked as the third most popular destination in the world for international travelers in Mastercard’s 2017 Global Destination Cities Index, as reported by CNN — may well give No. 1 Bangkok and No. 2 London a run for their money in 2018