Archive exhibition Tours et détours from June 2 to October 5, 2025

Starting June 2, 2025, through the exhibition Tours et détours: Le grand numéro de Paris La Défense at the Espace Info, the public institution invites you to take a trip back in time with a selection of photos of unusual events that made the neighborhood's heart beat between the 1970s and 1990s.

Imagine a giraffe strolling among skyscrapers under construction. Thousands of people trading clothes and vinyl records on the plaza as if at a huge urban fair. Artistic happenings popping up between two towers still under construction... Yet this is not fiction, but the forgotten history of the La Défense district between the 1960s and 1990s. A district undergoing a complete transformation, where the absurd had free rein, and where residents and visitors appropriated the space with humor, creativity, and freedom!

Through a selection of rare, unpublished, and offbeat photos from the public institution's archives, this retrospective allows us to share an intergenerational moment between memories and amazement. It also invites us to question our relationship with public space, art, and the city by highlighting a neighborhood of invention and experimentation, a veritable open-air testing ground capable of welcoming the unexpected.

Finally and above all, Tours et détours will take you on a humorous and tender revisiting of La Défense, a neighborhood that was also a setting for oddities, collective celebrations, and happy spontaneity. The exhibition showcases all these moments: funny, sometimes absurd, but deeply human. 
An invitation to see La Défense in a new light.

Practical information: 
From June 2 to October 5, 2025
Espace Info Paris La Défense, 15 place de La Défense, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.