I have lived in the 7eme Arr several times since 2018. Thus, I have walked past this building many times. It was so frustrating to be "shut out" of the campus, so I was left with looking on from the perimeter. Then, a friend told me "They have guided tours." So I booked some months in advance for the "English language" guided tour. You really MUST make advanced reservations, as space is very limited, and yours are offered only 2 days a week. These are supposed to last 90 minutes. As someone who loves C20th architecture, I was very excited to get up close to this structure.
The guide for the "English language" tour did not speak English fluently. He was clearly very, very unhappy having to speak English. He kept using one phrase that I assume was a transliteration from French, that we never use in English. Also, he simply used many French words at times, admitting he did not know the English. Almost all the information he gave during the tour was quite trivial. (I was unhappy he never mentioned the "S" in unesco.) Thus, the docent completely detracted from the experience of the building. It got so bad, that after about 20 minutes, many of my fellow tourists were joking together about how awful this docent was. As a final "insult", he ended the tour after 65 minutes!! OK, it is free, so one cannot complain, but clearly he did not want to do the tour.
The good new is that you can get into this building. Here you will see some fantastic sculptures by Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Alex Calder, etc. There is a really beautiful garden arranged by the American artist Isamu Noguchi, and an austere "chapel of contemplation" by the great contemporary Japanese architect Tadao Ando. You get to see the internal structure of the ground floor of the building, which is a beautiful contrast of cast concrete arches and a floor of irregular stone slabs. read more