Hangar Y
A cathedral of iron and glass at the edge of the forest, where the first controlled flight in history took off — and where you now walk through contemporary art under a nineteenth-century frame.
- Address
- 9 avenue de Trivaux, 92190 Meudon
- Phone
- +33 1 84 74 45 50
- Website
- hangar-y.com
- Opening hours
- 11:00–19:00 on weekends, public holidays and daily during zone C school holidays. Last entry 15 minutes before closing. Closed on weekdays outside holiday periods.
- Admission
- Hangar and park €3 · Sensory audio guide €6 · “L'Épopée du Hangar Y” immersive experience €12. Free for under-6s, disabled visitors and their companion, and holders of social minima. The park alone is free on weekdays.
- Getting there
- Meudon Val Fleury (RER C) or Meudon (Line N), then bus 169, 289 or 389 to “Trivaux – Hangar Y”. Vélib' station on site, car park with the first 30 minutes free.
What it is
The Hangar Y was built in 1879 to shelter military airships, using the metal frame of the Galerie des Machines from the 1878 Universal Exhibition. Its architect, Henri de Dion, taught Gustave Eiffel — and it shows: the same confidence in exposed iron, the same enormous interior volume.
On 9 August 1884 the airship La France, designed by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs, took off from here and returned to its starting point. It was the first closed-circuit flight in aviation history, and it was electric.
The building passed to the Ministry of Culture in 1990, was listed as a historic monument in 2000, then sat empty for four decades. It reopened to the public in spring 2023 after a full restoration.
What you can do
Three things, and you can pick just one. The park — ten hectares of the former royal domain, crossed by André Le Nôtre's Grande Perspective, dotted with contemporary sculptures and a large playground. The hangar itself, which hosts temporary exhibitions under the iron frame. And “L'Épopée du Hangar Y”, a thirty-minute immersive experience retracing the story of the site.
There is a bistro and a summer guinguette on site, which makes this the one place in Meudon where you can spend a whole afternoon without planning anything.
Practical advice
The hangar only opens at weekends, on public holidays and during zone C school holidays. Outside those days the park is still accessible and free — worth knowing if you are in Meudon on a Tuesday.
Combine it with the Rodin museum: both are on the same hillside, fifteen minutes apart by bus 169, and both open at the weekend.