Grand Palais

La Nef, dance floor under the largest glass roof in Europe

When night falls over the Champs-Élysées, the empty volume of the Nef stops being an exhibition hall and becomes a dance floor. Since the Grand Palais d'été in 2025, the After Nef evenings have occupied this iron and glass palace on Saturdays: house, techno, queer disco, raï, or oriental electronica, with dancing until 02:00. The collective Visual System projects the light installation Ciels onto the dome, designed to traverse the Art Nouveau structure painted in reseda green. It is not a club with a weekly schedule: it is a cultural venue that, on specific dates, lends its architecture to palace-scale clubbing.

A palace born for mass spectacle

Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, and Albert Thomas built the structure in three years for the Universal Exhibition, under the direction of Charles Girault. In May 1900 it opened to the public, and since 1901 it has hosted motor shows, equestrian competitions, and major modern events. A military hospital during the First World War, requisitioned during the Occupation, converted into Galeries nationales under André Malraux, and classified as a historical monument—the Nef in 1975 and the complex later—the venue exceeds 72,000 m². The Nef, at 16,900 m² and 45 meters under the dome, is the heart: a space free to furnish, with restored balconies and a maximum capacity of 9,000 people.

Electronica under a steel sky

In November 2022, with the palace still under construction, ARTE Concert filmed Moderat among the scaffolding, in one of the most recognizable electronic captures of the place. After the reopening, CHLOÉ—producer, founder of Lumière Noire, and resident of the Rex Club—, Kiddy Smile, and Horse Meat Disco occupied the dance floor; in 2026 the After Nef lineup features Myd, Dimitri From Paris, Sama’ Abdulhadi, and Acid Arab. In December 2025, the duo Air reinterpreted their Moon Safari album in a symphonic version as part of the Collector series. Concerts and DJ sets are staged under 17,500 m² of glass, the largest glass roof in Europe.

Reopened to become a living space once again

After four years of restoration led by Chatillon Architectes, the palace fully reopened in 2025, after hosting fencing and taekwondo for the Paris 2024 Games. The GrandPalaisRmn manages it as an open venue: Place centrale, Rotonde d’Antin, and Salon Seine with free access, restaurants—the Grand Café is open until 02:00—, a cloakroom, bookstore-boutiques, and an accessible route for people with reduced mobility, between the Seine and the Avenue Winston Churchill.