Pavillon Carré de Baudouin

An eighteenth-century pleasure house sits at the corner of rue des Pyrénées and rue de Ménilmontant in the twentieth arrondissement of Paris. The Pavillon Carré de Baudouin began life as a folie, a house built for leisure and retreat. You reach it at number 121 rue de Ménilmontant. In 1770 Nicolas Carré de Baudouin inherited the property and commissioned Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux, the city's Master of Buildings. The architect added a Palladian façade: a peristyle resting on four Ionic columns.

The Goncourt brothers, Jules and Edmond, spent part of their childhood in the house. From 1836 the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul ran the Asile des petits-orphelins, an orphanage here. It occupied an adjoining building with its own chapel. The sisters stayed until 1992, running a medical-social centre and a youth workers' home alongside the city of Paris. The building was listed as a historical monument in 1928. Paris bought the property in 2003 and hired architects Stéphane Bigoni and Antoine Mortemard for its rehabilitation. A garden of 1,800 square metres opened to the public in 2005. Two years later the pavilion, hidden from public view until then, opened across 815 square metres. An auditorium, exhibition rooms, offices for associations and a House of Secularism fill the floors.

Exhibitions, a popular university and street art share the calendar. The Invitations aux Arts et aux Savoirs runs entirely free of charge, and the garden wall carries an artistic programme devoted to urban art. Attendance can be startling: a 2018 retrospective of the photographer Willy Ronis drew more than 90,000 visitors in nine months.