On May 9, the part of the Quai de la Seine located at the Musée d’Orsay was named Quai Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in homage to the former President of the Republic, who died on December 2, 2020, who was the ” father” of the 19th century museum housed in the former Gare d’Orsay. This Monday, the Musée d’Orsay station on line C of the RER was named after the former head of state. On the museum esplanade, the ceremony was sponsored by the Île-de-France region, which oversees Île-de-France mobility and the public establishment of the Orsay and Orangerie museums.
From the mayor of the 7th arrondissement, Rachida Dati, to Valérie Pécresse, all the speakers recalled the reforming work of Giscard. “Both modern and classic, liberal and social, but not “at the same time”, because he was moving forward,” launched the former presidential candidate, in one of the rare allusions to current political news.
Since it was a question of renaming an RER station, his son Louis Giscard d’Estaing, highlighted his father’s action in terms of transport: the TGV construction site – even if it was designed under Pompidou and inaugurated by Mitterrand -, the development of the road network, in particular in “his” Auvergne, the creation of the Orange Card, ancestor of the Pass Navigo. It was also he who, on December 8, 1977, inaugurated the Châtelet-les-Halles station, at the crossroads of the first two lines A and B. As he liked to do, Giscard insisted on driving the first train himself, with, at his side, the new mayor of Paris who had just broken with him, Jacques Chirac. A photo as testimony, “proof that he had total confidence in my father to lead him to the right place,” quipped Louis Giscard d’Estaing, the animosity between the two men being legendary.
In the presence of Anne-Aymone Giscard d’Estaing and their two sons Henri and Louis, this inauguration of the renamed RER station took place in the presence of several former ministers (Hervé Gaymard, Jean-Pierre Fourcade, Pierre Méhaignerie, Dominique Bussereau, Maurice Leroy), the mayor LR and the Renaissance deputy of the 7th, Rachida Dati and Gilles Le Gendre, and former collaborators of Giscard (Jean-Claude Trichet, Jean-David Lévite…)
President of the Musée d’Orsay, Christophe Leribault recalled Giscard’s role in making “this 19th century station the museum of the 19th century”. President of the region and of IDF-Mobilités, Valérie Pécresse recalled that another station on line C had received the name of a former president of the Fifth, the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand station. Those who have faced each other twice in the presidential election “are now on the same line”.