iMusée des Arts et Métiers · Le Marais
Zeus, le cheval métallique au MuAM
A monumental metallic horse sculpture from the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, installed on the museum's forecourt with free public access.
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Every 20 minutes, the silver horse outside the museum breaks into a gallop for one minute. Its maker Aurélien Meyer told franceinfo that this is the point of showing it: the pivots and chains in the legs, and the horse coming alive.
This is Zeus, which carried a rider down the Seine in the Paris 2024 opening ceremony. Atelier blam in Nantes built it in aluminium, with a 3D-printed head, a hammered body and machined legs, and silver leaf on the head, chest and hooves. It stands 1.80 m at the withers, weighs 287 kg and sits on a platform made to look like water. After the Seine, Versailles and Mont-Saint-Michel, its current posting is a forecourt on rue Réaumur.
You don't need a ticket: it stands in front of the entrance, free. Museum guides run a demonstration at 2pm on weekends and every day of the Zone C school holidays. The making-of exhibition in the church closed on 29 March 2026.
Look for
The one-minute gallop
Every 20 minutes the articulated aluminium legs start to move, and you can watch the pivots and chains drive the gallop.
The 3D-printed head
Look at the head, printed in aluminium and finished in silver leaf, then at the body's curves, which were hammered into shape.
The water platform
The horse stands on a platform built to look like water underneath it, as it looked crossing the Seine on a submerged trimaran in 2024.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want the making-of exhibition: it closed in March 2026, and only the horse remains outside.
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Image credits
9
- Zeus, le cheval métallique au MuAMCourtesy of Musée des Arts et Métiers
- Martine Franck: Images, Press and Feminist StrugglesCourtesy of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua, History, MemoryCourtesy of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Suivez le fil! Design & Textile© Marcel Wanders - Crédit photographique : Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn
- Musée des Arts et MétiersMarianne Casamance, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Fondation Henri Cartier-BressonVVVCFFrance, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Centre PompidouAlf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries LafayettePhilouSunshine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Musée national Picasso-ParisFrançois de Dijon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0