The Petit Palais, and its neighbor the Grand Palais, were built to house exhibits at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris. Since then it has housed the city’s Fine Arts Museum (that’s city as opposed to national…). This year it hosted a large exhibit, Paris 1900: The City of Entertainment, focusing on the period of its own creation.
The building itself is one of the prime exhibits of the period, as shown by these railings. They are just there…not even a curator’s label!