Fifty years ago, on April 2, 1974, France woke up an orphan. After years of fighting against blood cancer, President Pompidou died in Paris.

Two days later, he made his last journey to the cemetery of Orvilliers, a village in Yvelines located 50 km west of Paris. Hundreds of onlookers invade the town and in the space of a day, the former post office becomes the epicenter of media life. The president had acquired ‘La Maison Blanche’, his second home, twenty years earlier.