Written by: Mahir Daiyan Ashraf
The Arsenal (not the football club) is a former 19th-century weapons depot that now hosts one of Europe’s most admired concert halls. It sits a short walk from the Esplanade, right next to two older neighbors: the Templars’ chapel and Saint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, a fourth-century basilica turned cultural space. Metz kept the history and traded ammunition for acoustics. In 1989, architect Ricardo Bofill reshaped the site into the hall we know today, opening it with the kind of confidence that dares great artists to test the room. People still talk about the sound.
The Grande Salle seats about 1,500. It uses the classic shoebox shape orchestras love, all warm wood, clean lines, and a volume of roughly 13,600 cubic meters. The proportions are in the same family as Vienna’s Musikverein, and every interior choice serves clarity. You hear the bow hair, not only the note. A soft piano line reaches the back row without anyone leaning forward.
Tonight’s student concert was the ideal first listen. Free with reservation, right after classes at 19h. The Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est played under Adrian Prabava, with Jeneba Kanneh-Mason at the piano. Florence Price’s Concerto for Piano in One Movement opened the night. The first entrance was a small lesson in acoustics. The piano line sat clearly over the orchestra, but it never felt separated. In the middle section, when the rhythm leaned into something more dance-like, the woodwinds answered cleanly and the hall kept the details intact. You could sit anywhere and follow the inner parts without squinting with your ears. Mussorgsky’s Tableaux d’une exposition showed the other side of the room. The Promenade stepped forward with brass that had height but no glare. Fast character pieces stayed transparent, so the strings could move quickly without turning into one block of sound. Percussion landed with weight and then decayed naturally. The room does not add drama, but rather allows the music’s own shape to be heard.
What I liked most was how the story of the place and the sound in it met in the same evening. The original Arsenal Ney went up in the 1860s under Napoleon III. In the renovation, one wing was removed to open a terrace, and most of the new hall was tucked underneath it, leaving the Jaumont stone façades to carry the street view. That is why the complex still reads as Metz and not as something that landed from elsewhere. It is also why the acoustics feel so natural. The architecture frames the sound instead of fighting it.
Metz takes music very seriously. The Arsenal, BAM, and the Trinitaires all sit under the Cité musicale-Metz umbrella, and the city holds a UNESCO Creative City of Music label. Translation for students: there is usually something worth hearing, often at prices that do not hurt your grocery budget.
If you have walked past the Arsenal on the Esplanade and never gone in, watch for the next student night. Take a seat and listen to how a whisper carries through the hall.

