Sevres.science / Sèvres, the place

Institutes & Facilities

Inside the Bureau

The BIPM is small for its role. It has four scientific departments, for physical metrology (length, mass, electricity, photometry and related fields), chemistry, ionizing radiation and time. Each runs comparisons in which national institutes measure the same standards and publish how far their results agree.

For mass, the Bureau keeps the International Prototype of the Kilogram and its own set of reference standards, operates a Kibble balance and organises the key comparisons of the world’s realisations of the kilogram. For time, it computes Coordinated Universal Time. The chemistry department maintains reference standards for gases such as ozone and carbon dioxide. Results of comparisons go into the key comparison database, the KCDB, which the BIPM keeps open to the public.

The Bureau is also the secretariat of the General Conference, the International Committee for Weights and Measures and its consultative committees, and it hosts their meetings in Sèvres.

Inside the manufactory

The national porcelain manufactory still works in small numbers: no more than about 5000 pieces a year, from table services and vases to stoneware, classical models and contemporary sculpture. Guided tours, some of them through the workshops, show how it is done.

The museum next door grew out of the Ceramics and Glassmaking Museum opened in 1824 on the initiative of Alexandre Brongniart, who directed the manufactory for the first half of the 19th century. It moved into its present palace-like building beside the Seine in 1876. Together with the Musée national Adrien Dubouché in Limoges, the manufactory and the museum form a public institution of the Ministry of Culture, the Cité de la céramique – Sèvres & Limoges, which also keeps a library of about 50 000 works on ceramics and the decorative arts.

• Pavillon de Breteuil, Sèvres / Saint-Cloud

  International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)

  Set up by the Metre Convention of 1875. It computes Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from data supplied by around 80 time laboratories and about 450 atomic clocks worldwide, and publishes the results every month in Circular T. It has kept the International Prototype of the Kilogram since 1889.

  Official website →

• Sèvres

  Sèvres – Manufacture et Musée nationaux

  The national porcelain manufactory, at work since 1756, and the national ceramics museum, with nearly 50 000 works from all periods and all corners of the world, including pieces made on site.

  Official website →