The Maison de la Radio, “Colosseum of modern times”, inaugurated 60 years ago by General de Gaulle

60 years ago, on December 14, 1963, the Maison de la Radio was inaugurated by General de Gaulle after several years of work.

The Maison de la Radio is 60 years old! The building was inaugurated on December 14, 1963 by General de Gaulle himself, who entered the hall that day to the sound of The Marseillaiseplayed by the Republican Guard.

It was 7 p.m. on December 14, 1963, when the President of the Republic entered this place which would henceforth house the RTF, Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, ancestor of the ORTF. He is welcomed by the architect of the Maison de la Radio, Henry Bernard, then delivers a speech without notes in the large symphonic studio called “104”: “Did radio need a home? Yes! Radio is a human, in other words collective, work!”

And it needed, continues General de Gaulle, a unitary and circular building to facilitate the concentration and cohesion of the teams’ work. Because until then, the studios and technical resources of public media were scattered throughout Paris and its suburbs: there were 39 different sites. The decision to group them together was taken in 1955 and work began three years later. It is therefore at 116 avenue du Président Kennedy that the Maison de la Radio is located, in place of a former disused gas factory. The location was chosen because it was on the banks of the Seine, very close to the Eiffel Tower: two symbols of France! An immense site was required to build such a house with its 400 meters of corridor and its 68 meter high tower: “The size of a room where the inauguration show was going to take place, on three screens, says a lot about this building, a sort of modern-day Coliseum made of aluminum, steel and concrete, which marks its futuristic physiognomy in the Parisian panorama.”

Why is the Maison de la Radio round?

The acoustics are much better when the studios, placed end to end, form a circle. There is also an anti-atomic shelter under the building, like at the Elysée Palace. But there was never a ministerial apartment, although General de Gaulle himself was convinced of it. On the day of the inauguration, he was surprised that his Minister of Information, Alain Peyrefitte, was not staying there. He was not completely wrong because it had been considered.