Architecture of the Paris Métro feature stonework, statues and other replica museum pieces, under subtle lighting, which together make the station into an antechamber of the Musée du Louvre. Until the reconstruction of the Louvre in the late 1980s, this station was the closest to the museum's entrance. When I. M. Pei's pyramid was added to the Louvre and made the central entrance at the end of the 1980s, the neighboring metro station Palais-Royal became the closest to the museum entrance; so close, in fact, that a subterranean corridor was constructed leading directly from the museum to the Palais-Royal station, which was renamed "Palais-Royal –
Paris architecture of the Belle Époque a new station, the Gare d'Orsay, closer to the center of the city and to the Exposition. It was the first station designed to accommodate electric trains, and it was intended to contain a hotel as well as a train station; the hotel was placed where the museum entrance is today. The original design for the station called for a Renaissance style facade similar to that of Haussmann's buildings on the boulevards. The City of Paris wanted something more monumental to match the grandeur Louvre across the Seine, but also wanted it to clearly express its function as a train