We lived in Paris for 10 years and tried for a long time to find a way to visit this building with rare name. To the best of our knowledge, there is only one way to achieve this: it is open for Heritage days (usually held on the third weekend of September), not every year, and registration is needed prior to the visit, as it is done by guided tours only. Watch up for the Heritage days program on the city of Meudon website (usually published end of August) and follow instructions for registration.

We visited that place in September 2014. For safety reasons, only one part of the building was accessible (and this must be the main reason to restrict the number of visitors), but this was enough to get a clear picture and understanding of the structure and the volume of the building. These visits can take place thanks to volunteers, part of an association aiming at protecting this building, trying to attract investors to restore it and, maybe one day, turning it into an airship museum. There were informative panels and people were here to answer questions. The tour also included a walk to the nearby hexagonal pond (“Bassin de Chalais”), once part of the park of Meudon palace.

This building was designed to host machines and engines during Paris World Exhibition in 1878. At the end of the fair, it was dismantled and rebuilt at its current location as one of the buildings of the Air army, who used to name buildings by letters: this new comer was assigned the letter Y, hence its name from then. During rebuilding, it was made a little bit higher so it could host dirigibles airships. As such, its structure is remarkable. It became home of one of the first airships ever built (modest and humble as we – French people - use to be, we simply named it “La France”). This was the first machine built by human achieving a loop flight: it took off and came back to land on the exact same place, in front of the hangar (1884). For its structure and for being so closely associated, by design, usage, time and location to that historic flight, we believe Hangar Y would deserve its inscription as a WHS. For sure this would be a long way and the building would need some restoration works. As far as we could understand from recent searches, the association is still actively looking for funding.