UNESCO Headquarters, or Maison de l'UNESCO, is a building inaugurated on 3 November 1958 at number 7

Place de Fontenoy The Place de Fontenoy () is a square in Paris, France, named after the victory of Maréchal Maurice de Saxe in the Battle of Fontenoy. At number 7 is the World Heritage Centre,UNESCOContact and visit Unesco/ref> the headquarters of the UNESCO ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, to serve as the headquarters for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

). It is a building that can be visited freely.

Design

The design of the UNESCO Headquarters building was the combined work of three architects:

Bernard Zehrfuss Bernard Louis Zehrfuss (Angers, 20 October 1911 – Neuilly-sur-Seine, 3 July 1996) was a French architect. Life He was born at Angers, into a family that had fled from the Alsace in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War. Zehrfuss's father was kil ...

(France),

Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981) was a Hungarian-American modernist architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1944. At the Bauhaus he designed the Was ...

(Hungary), and

Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi (21 June 1891 – 9 January 1979) was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and was known wo ...

(Italy). Plans were also validated by an international committee of five architects composed of

Lúcio Costa Lúcio Marçal Ferreira Ribeiro Lima Costa (27 February 1902 – 13 June 1998) was a Brazilian architect and urban planner, best known for his plan for Brasília. Early life Costa was born in Toulon, France, the son of Brazilian parents. His ...

(Brazil),

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...

(Germany/United States),

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

(France),

Sven Markelius Sven Gottfrid Markelius (25 October 1889 – 24 February 1972) was a Swedish modernist architect. Markelius played an important role in the post-war urban planning of Stockholm, for example in the creation of the model suburbs of Vällingby (1950 ...

(Sweden) and

Ernesto Nathan Rogers Ernesto Nathan Rogers (March 16, 1909 – November 7, 1969) was an Italian architect, writer and educator. Career Rogers was born in Trieste, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as a British citizen to an Ida Manni and Romeo Rogers, the latter ...

(Italy), with the collaboration of

Eero Saarinen Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer who created a wide array of innovative designs for buildings and monuments, including the General Motors Technical Center; the pa ...

(Finland).

Description

The main building, which houses the secretariat, consists of seven floors forming a three-pointed star. To this is added a building called the "accordion" and a cubic building, which is intended for permanent delegations and

non-governmental organisations A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

. These buildings occupy a trapezoidal area of land measuring , cut in the northeast corner of the semi-circular shape of the

. It is bordered by avenues of Saxony, Segur de Suffren and Lowendal.

Relations with France

The land on which the building is built is the property of the French State. By a decree of 22 December 1952, it was assigned to the

Foreign Ministry In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral re ...

to put at the disposal of UNESCO. This was done by a lease for a term of 99 years, renewable at a nominal rent (1000 francs per year), near the end of the lease. In addition, the residence of this intergovernmental organization on the French territory is governed by a headquarters agreement that defines its privileges and immunities. Both agreements were signed in Paris in 1954, respectively on 25 June and 25 July. The French Parliament approved the lease by a law enacted on 6 August 1955, authorized the President of the Republic to ratify the Headquarters Agreement. The Headquarters Agreement entered into force on 23 November 1955. It was published by a decree of 11 January 1956.Décret n°56-42 du 11 janvier 1956 portant publication de l'accord entre la République française et l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'éducation, la science et la culture, relatif au siège de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'éducation, la science et la culture et à ses privilèges et immunités sur le territoire français, signé à Paris le 2 juillet 1954
JORF n°13 du 17 janvier 1956, p.625–628. Panorama of Paris from the top of UNESCO

Panorama of Paris from the top of UNESCO

References

Bibliography

* ''Le Siège de l'Unesco à Paris'', preface by

Luther Evans Luther Harris Evans (13 October 1902 – 23 December 1981) was an American political scientist who served as the tenth Librarian of Congress and third Director-General of UNESCO. Early life and career Born in Sayersville in Bastrop County, Tex ...

, introduction by

Françoise Choay Françoise Choay (29 March 1925 – 8 January 2025) was a French architectural and urban historian and theorist. From 1973 on, she was a professor at the University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbon ...

, photographs by

Lucien Hervé Lucien Hervé (born László Elkán: 7 August 1910, – 26 June 2007) was a Hungarian photographer. He was notable for his architectural photography, beginning with his work for Le Corbusier. Biography * 1910 : Born as László Elkán on 7 Au ...

Gerd Hatje Gerd Hatje (14 April 1915 – 24 July 2007) was a German publisher. The publishing house that he founded in 1945, named the Humanitas Verlag, renamed in 1947 as Verlag Gerd Hatje, is internationally known for contemporary art, photography and arch ...

, Stuttgart, 1958.

External links