Louvre French Finance Ministry
Who occupied Louvre Palace from 1793 to 1905?
Louvre Palace The Louvre Palace ( , ) , often referred to in French simply as Louvre , is an iconic building of the French state located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris , occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain lAuxerrois . Originally a military facility , it has served numerous government-related functions in the past , including intermittently as a royal residence between the 14th and 18th centuries . It is now mostly used by the Louvre Museum , which first opened there in 1793 . Whereas the area had been inhabited for thousands of years , the Louvre’s history starts around 1190 with its first construction as a fortress defending the western front of the Wall of Philip II Augustus . The Louvres oldest section still standing above ground , its Lescot Wing , dates from the late 1540s , when Francis I started the replacement of the medieval castle with a new design inspired by classical antiquity and Italian Renaissance architecture . Most parts of the current building were constructed in the 17th and 19th centuries . For more than three centuries , the history of the Louvre has been closely intertwined with that of the Tuileries Palace , created to its west by Catherine de Medici in 1564 and finally demolished in 1883 . The Tuileries was the main seat of French executive power during the last third of that period , from the return of the King and his court from Versailles in October 1789 to the Paris Commune which decided to burn it down in its final days in May 1871 . The Pavillon de Flore and Pavillon de Marsan , which used to respectively mark the southern and northern ends of the Tuileries , are now considered part of the Louvre Palace . The Carrousel Garden , first created in the late 19th century in what used to be the great courtyard of the Tuileries ( or Cour du Carrousel ) , is now considered part of the Tuileries Garden . Besides the world-class status of the eponymous museum , the Louvre Palace stands apart in Paris , France and even Europe , for its uniquely rich history and the multiple layers of legacy thereof that have been preserved to this day . In 1924 , the Baedeker guide to Paris called it the largest and most splendid palace in the world . General description . This sections provides a summary description of the present-day complex and its main constituent parts . Location and layout . The Louvre Palace is situated on the right bank of the Seine , between the Quai François Mitterrand to its south , the to its west ( thus named since 1957 ; formerly and , converted into an underpass in 1987-1989 ) , the Rue de Rivoli to its north , and the Place du Louvre to its east . The complex occupies about 40 hectares with buildings distributed around two main open spaces : the eastern Cour Carrée ( square courtyard ) , which is closed by four wings that form the square of its name , and the central Cour Napoléon , which is open on its western side , beyond the thoroughfare known as Place du Carrousel , towards the Carrousel Garden and the rest of the Tuileries Garden . Since 1988 , the Louvre Pyramid in the middle of the Cour Napoléon has marked the center of the Louvre complex . At the same time , the Louvre Museum has adopted a toponymy developed by the Carbone Smolan Agency to refer to the three clusters of building that surround that central focus point : - To the east , the Sully Wing is the square-shaped set of buildings that surrounds the Cour Carrée , named after Maximilien de Béthune , Duke of Sully . It includes the 16th-century Lescot Wing and the footprint of the Medieval Louvre whose remains are displayed underground ; - To the south , the Denon Wing is the array of buildings between the Cour Napoléon and the Seine , named named after the Louvres first director Vivant Denon . the Louvres southwestern wing is the Aile de Flore . The long Grande Galerie runs on the first floor for much of the length of this building , on the Seine-facing side . - To the north , the Richelieu Wing is the almost-symmetrical array of buildings between the Cour Napoléon and the rue de Rivoli , named after Cardinal Richelieu . Its western extension alongside rue de Rivoli is the , itself continued by the Aile de Marsan . The Louvre Museum occupies most of the palaces space , but not all of it . The main other users are at the buildings two western tips : in the southwestern Aile de Flore , the École du Louvre and Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France ( C2RMF ) ; and in the northwestern Aile de Marsan , the Musée des Arts Décoratifs . In total , some 51,615 square meters ( 555,000 square feet ) in the palace complex are devoted to public exhibition floor space . Many sections of the Louvre are referred to as wings ( ) and pavilions ( ) - typically , the pavilions are the blocks at either the end or the center of a wing . In the Louvres context , the word wing does not denote a peripheral location : the Lescot Wing , in particular , was built as the Louvres main corps de logis . Given the Louvre wings length and the fact that they typically abutted parts of the city with streets and private buildings , several of them have passageways on the ground floor which in the Louvres specific context are called . Toponymy . The origin of the name Louvre is unclear . French historian Henri Sauval , probably writing in the 1660s , stated that he had seen in an old Latin-Saxon glossary , Leouar is translated castle and thus took Leouar to be the origin of Louvre . According to Keith Briggs , Sauvals theory is often repeated , even in recent books , but this glossary has never been seen again , and Sauvals idea is viewed as obsolete . Briggs suggests that H . J . Wolfs proposal in 1969 that Louvre derives instead from Latin Rubras , meaning red soil , is more plausible . David Hanser suggests instead that the word may come from French , a place where dogs were trained to chase wolves . Beyond the name of the palace itself , the toponymy of the Louvre can be treacherous . Partly because of the buildings long history and links to changing politics , different names have applied at different times to the same structures or rooms . For example , what used to be known in the 17th and 18th centuries the or is now generally referred to as Pavillon de lHorloge , or ( especially when considered from the west ) , or also after the architect Jacques Lemercier who first designed it in 1624 . In some cases , the same name has designated different parts of the building at different times . For example , in the 19th century , the referred to what was later called the ( still later , ) , on the south side of the Grande Galerie facing the Seine , before becoming the name for the main pavilion of the Richelieu Wing on the rue de Rivoli , its exact symmetrical point from the Louvre Pyramid . The main room on the first floor of the Lescot Wing has been the , , , , in the 16th and 17th centuries . It was fragmented into apartments during the 18th century , then recreated in the early 19th and called successively , or ( the latter also being the name of two other ceremonial rooms , created in the 1850s and 1860s respectively ) ; then as part of the museum , , after 1871 in honor of donor Louis La Caze , and eventually , its current name . The room immediately below , generally known as , has also been called or in the past , among other names . Sully Wing . The Sully Wing forms a square of approximately side length . The protruding sections at the corners and center of each side are known as . Clockwise from the northwest corner , they are named as follows : ( after a now-disappeared street ) , ( after the nearby ) , , ( also ) , , , , and , the latter also known as . The section between the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon Sully , known as the Lescot Wing ( ) as it was designed by architect Pierre Lescot , is the oldest standing part of the entire Louvre Palace . The section between the Pavillon Sully and the Pavillon de Beauvais , which was modeled after the Lescot Wing by architect Jacques Lemercier , is similarly known as the Lemercier Wing ( ) . The eastern wing is the , named after its iconic eastern façade , the Louvre Colonnade initially designed by Charles Perrault . Denon and Flore Wings . On the southern side of the Cour Napoléon , the Denon Wings three main pavilions are named respectively , from east to west , after Napoleon-era officials Pierre Daru , Vivant Denon and Nicolas François Mollien . Between these and the wing facing the seine are three courtyards , from east to west the ( covered as a glass atrium since 1934 ) , ( ground floor covered since 2012 ) , and . On the side of the Seine , this wing starts with the north–south bordering a side garden known as the , and continues westwards along the Quai François Mitterrand with the Salon Carré , Grande Galerie , and Pavillon de Flore . In the middle of the Grande Galerie are the , a composition of three monumental arches flanked by two narrow pavilions named respectively after the Duke of Lesdiguières and Henri de La Trémoille ( and ) . Further west are the , a protruding structure on the northern side , the , a passageway to the quay , the on the north side , now the main entrance to the École du Louvre , and finally the Pavillon de Flore . Richelieu and Marsan Wings . Similarly , on the northern side of the Cour Napoléon are , from east to west , the pavilions named after Jean-Baptiste Colbert , Cardinal Richelieu , and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot . Between these and the rue de Rivoli are three courtyards , from east to west the ( formerly ) , ( formerly or ) , and ( formerly or ) . On the side facing the rue de Rivoli , the main salient feature is the , which connects to the through the ground-floor ( formerly ) between the and . Further west are the and the , built in the early 19th century and named after the nearby , then the and the Pavillon de Marsan , both rebuilt by Hector Lefuel in the 1870s . Pyramid and underground spaces . The Louvre Pyramid , built in the 1980s on a design by I . M . Pei , is now the centerpiece of the entire Louvre complex . It leads to the underground which in turn serves a vast complex of underground spaces , including the Carrousel du Louvre commercial mall around an inverted pyramid further west . Architectural style . The present-day Louvre Palace is a vast complex of wings and pavilions which , although superficially homogeneous in scale and architecture , is the result of many phases of building , modification , destruction and reconstruction . Building history . This section focuses on matters of design , construction and decoration , leaving aside the fitting or remodeling of exhibition spaces within the museum , which are described in the article Louvre . No fewer than twenty building campaigns have been identified in the history of the Louvre Palace . The architect of the largest such campaign , Hector Lefuel , crisply summarized the identity of the complex by noting : ( translatable as The Louvre is a building that has gone through a lot ) . In the early 1920s author , who would soon become the Louvres Director , noted that it has become , through the very slow pace of its development , the most representative monument of our national life . Late 12th and 13th centuries . In 1190 King Philip II of France , who was about to leave for the Third Crusade , ordered the construction of a defensive wall all around Paris . To protect the city , he opted to build the Louvre as a fortress just outside the walls junction with the Seine on its right bank , on the road to the Duchy of Normandy that was still controlled by his English rivals . Completed in 1202 , the new fortress was situated in what is now the southwest quadrant of the Cour Carrée , and some of its remains , excavated between late 1983 and late 1985 , are conserved underground . The original Louvre was nearly square in plan , at seventy-eight by seventy-two meters , and enclosed by a 2.6-metre thick crenellated and machicolated curtain wall . The entire structure was surrounded by a water-filled moat . On the outside of the walls were ten round defensive towers : one at each corner and at the center of the northern and western sides , and two pairs respectively flanking the narrow gates on the southern and eastern sides . In the courtyard , slightly offset to the northeast , was the cylindrical keep ( or ) , thirty meters high and fifteen meters wide with 4-meter-thick external walls . The keep was encircled by a deep , dry ditch with stone counterscarps to help prevent the scaling of its walls with ladders . Accommodations in the fortress were supplied by the vaulted chambers of the keep as well as two wings built against the insides of the curtain walls of the western and southern sides . The circular plans of the towers and the keep avoided the dead angles created by square or rectangular designs which allowed attackers to approach out of firing range . Cylindrical keeps were typical of French castles at the time , but few were as large as the Louvres . Louis IX added constructions in the 1230s , included the medieval Louvres main ceremonial room or in which several historical events took place , and the castles first chapel . The partly preserved basement part of that program was rediscovered during heating installations at the Louvre in 1882-1883 , and has since then been known successively as the and , after renovation in the 1980s , as the . 14th century . In the late 1350s , the growth of the city and the insecurity brought by the Hundred Years War led Etienne Marcel , provost of the merchants ( i.e . municipal leader ) of Paris , to initiate the construction of a new protective wall beyond that of Philip II . King Charles V continued the project in the 1360s , and it was later known as the Wall of Charles V . From its westernmost point at the Tour du Bois , the new wall extended east along the north bank of the Seine to the old wall , enclosing the Louvre and greatly reducing its military value . Remains of that wall have been uncovered and reconstructed in the present-day Louvres Carrousel du Louvre . Shortly after becoming king in 1364 Charles V abandoned the Palais de la Cité , which he associated with the insurgency led by Etienne Marcel , and made the Louvre into a royal residence for the first time , with the transformation designed by his architect . This was a political statement as well as a utility project - one scholar wrote that Charles V made the Louvre his political manifesto in stone and referred to it as a remarkably discursive monument-a form of architectural rhetoric that proclaimed the revitalization of France after years of internal strife and external menace . The curtain wall was pierced with windows , new wings added to the courtyard , and elaborate chimneys , turrets , and pinnacles to the top . Known as the ( pretty Louvre ) , Charles Vs palace was memorably pictured in the illustration The Month of October of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry . 15th century . In the late 14th and early 15th centuries , the preferred royal residence in Paris was the Hôtel Saint-Pol in what became the Marais , until the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War resulted in the monarchy leaving Paris altogether ; in the 1420s and 1430s Charles VII resided largely at or near Bourges , whereas his rival English claimant Henry VIs representative , the Duke of Bedford , generally resided in his base of Rouen , and while in Paris in his Hôtel des Tournelles . Even after Charles VIIs ceremonial entry into Paris in 1437 and after the effective end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 , French monarchs preferred residing in the Châteaux of the Loire Valley , the Palace of Fontainebleau or , when in Paris , at the Château de Vincennes or the Hôtel des Tournelles . Meanwhile , the Louvre Castle was left in a state of increasing disrepair . 16th century . In 1528 , after returning from his captivity in Spain following his defeat at Pavia , Francis I ordered the demolition of the Louvres old keep . In 1546 he formally commissioned the architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon to modernize the Louvre into a Renaissance style palace , but the project appears to have actually started in 1545 since Lescot ordered stone deliveries in December of that year . The death of Francis I in 1547 interrupted the work , but it restarted under Franciss successor Henry II who on ordered changes in the buildings design . Lescot tore down the western wing of the old Louvre Castle and rebuilt it as what has become known as the Lescot Wing , ending on the southern side with the Pavillon du Roi . In the latter , he designed in 1556 the ceiling for Henry IIs bedroom, } still largely preserved after relocation in 1829 to the Louvres Colonnade Wing , for which he departed from the French tradition of beamed ceilings . On the ground floor , Lescot installed monumental stone caryatids based on classical precedents in the , now known as the . On the northern end of the new wing , Lescot created a monumental staircase in the 1550s , long known as the ( now , with sculpted ceilings attributed to Jean Goujon . During the early 1560s , Lescot demolished the southern wing of the old Louvre and started to replace it with a duplication of the Lescot Wing . His plan may have been to create a square complex of a similar size as the old Louvre , not dissimilar to the Château dÉcouen that had been recently completed on Jean Bullants design , with an identical third wing to the north and a lower , entrance wing on the eastern side . Some authors , however , reckon that the first plans to extend the Louvres courtyard to its current size by doubling the lengths of the wings may have been conceived as early as Henry IIs reign , even though the implementation only started in the 1620s . Lescot also designed the Petite Galerie , which ran from the southwest corner of the Louvre to the Seine . A message to Charles , Cardinal of Lorraine in March 1558 mentions that new rooms should be furnished for Easter with tapestry . All work stopped in the late 1560s , however , as the Wars of Religion gathered momentum . In the meantime , beginning in 1564 , Catherine de Medici directed the building of a new residence to the west , outside the wall of Charles V . It became known as the Tuileries Palace because it was built on the site of old tile factories ( ) . Architect Philibert de lOrme started the project , and was replaced after his death in 1570 by Jean Bullant . A letter of March 1565 indicates that Catherine de Medici already considered a building to connect the Tuileries with the older Louvre building . Henry IV , Frances new king from 1589 ( the first from the House of Bourbon ) and master of Paris from 1594 , is associated with the further articulation of what became known as the ( Grand Design ) of uniting the Louvre and the Tuileries in a single building , together with the extension of the eastern courtyard to the current dimensions of the Cour Carrée . From early 1595 he directed the construction of the Grande Galerie , designed by his competing architects Louis Métezeau and Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau , who are respectively credited with the eastern and western sections of the building by a long tradition of scholarship . This major addition , about 460 meters long , was built along the bank of the Seine . On the ground floor at the eastern end of the new wing , Métezeau created a lavishly decorated room that was known as the or , later called and now . At the time , the room on the first floor above , later Salon Carré , was known as or . Henry IV also had the first floor of the Petite Galerie built up and decorated as the , with portraits of the former kings and queens of France . A portrait of Marie de Medici by Frans Pourbus the Younger , still in the Louvre , is a rare remnant of this series . 17th century . In 1624 , Louis XIII initiated the construction on a new building echoing the Pavillon du Roi on the northern end of the Lescot Wing , now known as the Pavillon de lHorloge , and of a wing further north that would start the quadrupling of the Louvres courtyard . Architect Jacques Lemercier won the design competition against Jean Androuet du Cerceau , Clément II Métezeau , and the son of Salomon de Brosse . The works were stopped in 1628 at a time of hardship for the kingdom and state finances , and only progressed very slowly until 1639 . In 1639 Lemercier started the construction of a new staircase mirroring Lescots , which has since been often been wrongly referred to as . That staircase was still unfinished when the Fronde again interrupted the works in the 1640s , and its decoration has never been completed since then . At that time , much of the construction ( though not the decoration ) of the new wing had been completed , but the northern pavilion , or , designed by Lemercier similarly as Lescots Pavillon du Roi , had barely been started . On the southern side , Lemercier commissioned Nicolas Poussin to decorate the ceiling of the Grande Galerie . Poussin arrived from Rome in early 1641 , but returned to Italy in November 1642 leaving the work unfinished . During Louis XIVs minority and the Fronde , from 1643 to 1652 the Louvre was left empty as the royal family stayed at the Palais-Royal or outside of Paris ; the Grande Galerie served as a wheat warehouse and deteriorated . On , the king and the court ceremonially re-entered the Louvre and made it their residence again , initiating a new burst of construction that would last to the late 1670s . By 1660 the and the western half of the northern wing had been completed . Meanwhile Anne of Austria , like Marie de Medici as queen mother before her , inhabited the ground-floor apartment in the Cour Carrées southern wing . She extended it to the ground floor of the Petite Galerie , which had previously been the venue for the Kings Council That summer apartment was fitted by architect Louis Le Vau , who had succeeded Lemercier upon the latters death in 1654 . The ceilings , decorated in 1655-1658 by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli who had been recommended by Cardinal Mazarin , are still extant in the suite of rooms now known as the . In 1659 , Louis XIV instigated a new phase of construction under Le Vau and painter Charles Le Brun . Le Vau oversaw the remodeling and completion of the Tuileries Palace , and at the Louvre , the completion of the walls of the north wing and of the eastern half of the south wing . On , a fire destroyed the attic of the and much of the in the Petite Galerie ( though not Anne of Austrias ground-floor apartment ) . Le Vau was tasked by Louis XIV to lead the reconstruction . He rebuilt the as the more ornate Galerie dApollon , created a new suite of rooms flanking it to the west ( the , later ) with a new façade on what became known as the ( later , , and now ) , and expanded the former on the northern side as well as making it double-height , creating the Salon Carré in its current dimensions . From 1668 to 1678 the Grande Galerie was also decorated with wood panelling , even though that work was left unfinished . The Salon Carré , however , was still undecorated when the court left for Versailles in the late 1670s . Meanwhile , landscape architect André Le Nôtre redesigned the Tuileries , first created in 1564 in the Italian style , as a French formal garden . The other major project of the 1660s was to create the Louvres façade towards the city and thus complete the Cour Carrée on its eastern side . It involved a convoiluted process , with the kings minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert first sidelining Le Vau and then calling the aging maestro Gian Lorenzo Bernini from Italy . Bernini stayed in Paris from May 1665 to 1666 but his designs did not gather approval , even though some building works started on their basis . Eventually a committee comprising Le Vau , Charles Le Brun and Claude Perrault designed the Louvre Colonnade on a flamboyant and highly influential architectural concept . Works started in 1667 and the exterior structures were largely completed by 1674 , but would not be fully decorated and roofed until the early 19th century under Napoleon . To harmonize the Louvres exterior , the decision was made in 1668 to create a new façade in front of Le Vaus for the southern wing , designed by the same architectural committee , albeit not on the northern side which was just being completed by then . The works at the louvre , however , stopped in the late 1670s as the king redirected all construction budgets at the Palace of Versailles , despite his minister Colberts insistence on completing the Louvre . Louis XIV had already left the Louvre from the beginning of 1666 , immediately after the death of his mother Anne of Austria in her ground-floor apartment , and would never reside there again , preferring Versailles , Vincennes , Saint-Germain-en-Laye , or if he had to be in Paris , the Tuileries . From the 1680s a new era started for the Louvre , with comparatively little external construction and fragmentation of its interior spaces across a variety of different uses . 18th century . After the definitive departure of the royal court for Versailles in 1682 , the Louvre became occupied by multiple individuals and organizations , either by royal favor or simply squatting . Its tenants included the infant Mariana Victoria of Spain during her stay in Paris in the early 1720s , artists , craftsmen , the Academies , and various royal officers . For example , in 1743 courtier and author Michel de Bonneval was granted the right to refurbish much of the wing between the and the into his own house on his own expense , including 28 rooms on the ground floor and two mezzanine levels , and an own entrance on the Cour Carrée . After Bonnevals death in 1766 his family was able to keep the house for a few more years . Some new houses were even erected in the middle of the Cour Carrée , but were eventually torn down on the initiative of the Marquis de Marigny in early 1756 . A follow-up 1758 decision led to the clearance of buildings on most of what is now the Place du Louvre in front of the Colonnade , except for the remaining parts of the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon which were preserved for a few more years . Marigny had ambitious plans for the completion of the Cour Carrée , but their execution was cut short in the late 1750s by the adverse developments of the Seven Years War . Jacques-Germain Soufflot removed the chimneys of Le Vaus dome above the Pavillon des Arts , which were in poor condition , and designed the northern passageway ( ) of the Cour Carrée in the late 1750s . The southern was later designed by and completed in 1780 . Three arched were also opened in 1760 under the Grande Galerie , through the and immediately to its west . The 1790s were a time of turmoil for the Louvre as for the rest of France . On , the king and court were forced to return from Versailles and settled in the Tuileries Palace ; many courtiers moved into the Louvre . Many of these in turn emigrated during the French Revolution , and more artists swiftly moved into their vacated Louvre apartments . 19th century . In December 1804 , Napoleon appointed Pierre Fontaine as architect of the Tuileries and the Louvre . Fontaine had forged a strong professional bond with his slightly younger colleague Charles Percier . Between 1805 and 1810 Percier and Fontaine completed the works of the Cour Carrée that had been left unfinished since the 1670s , despite Marignys repairs around 1760 . They opted to equalize its northern and southern wing with an attic modeled on the architecture of the Colonnade wing , thus removing the existing second-floor ornamentation and sculptures , of which some were by Jean Goujon and his workshop . The Cour Carrée and Colonnade wing were completed in 1808–1809 , and Percier and Fontaine created the monumental staircase on the latters southern and northern ends between 1807 and 1811 . Percier and Fontaine also created the monumental decoration of most of the ground-floor rooms around the Cour Carrée , most of which still retain it , including their renovation of Jean Goujons . On the first floor , they recreated the former of the Lescot Wing , which had been partitioned in the 18th century , and gave it double height by creating a visitors gallery in what had formerly been the Lescot Wings attic . Further west , Percier and Fontaine created the monumental entrance for the Louvre Museum ( called since 1804 ) . This opened from what was at the time called the , abutting the Lescot Wing to the west , into the , the monumental room at the northern end of the . The entrance door was dominated by a colossal bronze head of the emperor , by Lorenzo Bartolini . Visitors could either visit the classical antiquities collection ( ) in Anne of Austrias rooms or in the redecorated ground floor of the Cour Carrées southern wing to the left , or they could turn right and access Percier and Fontaines new monumental staircase , leading to both the Salon Carré and the ( formerly ) on the first floor ( replaced in the 1850s by the Escalier Daru ) . The two architects also remade the interior design of the Grande Galerie , in which they created nine sections separated by groups of monumental columns , and a system of roof lighting with lateral skylights . On the eastern front of the Tuileries Palace , Percier and Fontaine had the existing buildings cleared away to create a vast open space , the Cour du Carrousel , which they had closed with an iron fence in 1801 . Somewhat ironically , the clearance effort was facilitated by the Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise , a failed bomb attack on Napoleon on , which damaged many of the neighborhoods building that were later demolished without compensation . In the middle of the Cour du Carrousel , the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was erected in 1806–1808 to commemorate Napoleons military victories . On , Percier and Fontaines plan for the completion of the of uniting the Louvre and the Tuileries was approved , following a design competition among forty-seven participants . Works started immediately afterwards to build an entirely new wing starting from the Pavillon de Marsan , with the intent to expand it all the way to the Pavillon de Beauvais on the northwestern corner of the Cour Carrée . By the end of Napoleons rule the works had progressed up to the . The architectural design of the southern façade of that wing replicated that attributed to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau for the western section of the Grande Galerie . Percier and Fontaine were retained by Louis XVIII at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration , and kept working on the decoration projects they had started under Napoleon . The was opened to the public on . But there were no further budget allocations for the completion of the Louvre Palace during the reigns of Louis XVIII , Charles X and Louis-Philippe I , while the kings resided in the Tuileries . By 1825 , Percier and Fontaines northern wing had only been built up to the , and made no progress in the following 25 years . Further attempts at budget appropriations to complete the Louvre , led by Adolphe Thiers in 1833 and again in 1840 , were rejected by the . From the early days of the Second Republic , a greater level of ambition for the Louvre was again signaled . On , the provisional government published an order that renamed the louvre as the ( Peoples Palace ) and heralded the project to complete it and dedicate it to the exhibition of art and industry as well as the National Library . During the Republics brief existence , the palace was extensively restored by Louvre architect Félix Duban , especially the exterior façades of the Petite Galerie and Grande Galerie , on which Duban designed the ornate portal now known as . Expropriation arrangements were made for the completion of the Louvre and the rue de Rivoli , and the remaining buildings that cluttered the space that is now the Cour Napoléon were cleared away. . No new buildings had been started , however , by the time of the December 1851 coup détat . On this basis , Napoleon III was able to finally unite the Louvre with the Tuileries in a single , coherent building complex . The plan of the Louvres expansion were made by Louis Visconti , a disciple of Percier , who died suddenly in December 1853 and was succeeded in early 1854 by Hector Lefuel . Lefuel developed Viscontis plan into a higher and more ornate building concept , and executed it at record speed so that the was inaugurated by the emperor on . The new buildings were arranged around the space then called , later and , since the 20th century , Cour Napoléon . Before his death , Visconti also had time to rearrange the Louvres gardens outside the Cour Carrée , namely the to the south , the to the east and the to the north , and also designed the Orangerie and Jeu de Paume on the western end of the Tuileries Garden . In the 1860s , Lefuel also demolished the Pavillon de Flore and nearly half of the Grande Galerie , and reconstructed them on a modified design that included the passageway known as the ( later , now Porte des Lions ) , a new for state functions , and the monumental replacing those created in 1760 near the . At the end of the Paris Commune on , the Tuileries Palace was burned down , as also was the Louvre Imperial Library in what is now the Richelieu Wing . The rest of palace , including the museum , was saved by the efforts of troopers , firemen and museum curators . In the 1870s , the ever-resourceful Lefuel led the repairs to the Pavillon de Flore , and reconstructed the Pavillon de Marsan between 1874 and 1879 . In 1877 , a bronze Genius of Arts by Antonin Mercié was installed in the place of Antoine-Louis Baryes equestrian statue of Napoleon III , which had been toppled in September 1870 . Meanwhile , the fate of the Tuileries ruins kept being debated . Both Lefuel and influential architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc advocated their preservation and the building reconstruction , but after the latter died in 1879 and Lefuel in 1880 , the Third Republic opted to erase that memory of the former monarchy . The final decision was made in 1882 and executed in 1883 , thus forever changing the Louvres layout . Later projects to rebuild the Tuileries have resurfaced intermittently but never went very far . A tall was planned in 1884 and erected in 1888 in front of the two gardens on what is now the Cour Napoléon . That initiative carried heavy political symbolism , since Gambetta was widely viewed as the founder of the Third Republic , and his outsized celebration in the middle of Napoleon IIIs landmark thus affirmed the final victory of republicanism over monarchism nearly a century after the French Revolution . Most of the monuments sculptures were in bronze and in 1941 were melted for military use by German occupying forces . What remained of the Gambetta Monument was dismantled in 1954 . 20th century . Some long unfinished parts of Lefuels expansion were only completed in the early 20th century , such as between 1900 and 1910 , by Louvre architects Gaston Redon and following Lefuels general design . Aside from the interior refurbishment of the Pavillon de Flore in the 1960s , there was little change to the Louvres architecture during most of the 20th century . The most notable was the initiative taken in 1964 by minister André Malraux to excavate and reveal the basement level of the Louvre Colonnade , thus removing the and giving the Place du Louvre its current shape . In September 1981 , newly elected French President François Mitterrand proposed the Grand Louvre plan to move the Finance Ministry out of the Richelieu Wing , allowing the museum to expand dramatically . American architect I . M . Pei was awarded the project and in late 1983 proposed a modernist glass pyramid for the central courtyard . The Louvre Pyramid and its underground lobby , the , opened to the public on . A second phase of the Grand Louvre project , completed in 1993 , created underground space below the Place du Carrousel to accommodate car parks , multi-purpose exhibition halls and a shopping mall named Carrousel du Louvre . Daylight is provided at the intersection of its axes by the Louvre Inverted Pyramid ( ) , a humorous reference to its bigger , right-side-up sister upstairs . The Louvres new spaces in the reconstructed Richelieu Wing were near-simultaneously inaugurated in November 1993 . The third phase of the Grand Louvre , mostly executed by the late 1990s , involved the refurbishment of the museums galleries in the Sully and Denon Wings where much exhibition space had been freed during the project second phase . The renovation of the Carrousel Garden was also completed in 2001 Non-museum uses . Whereas the name Louvre Palace refers to its intermittent role as a monarchical residence , this is neither its original nor its present function . The Louvre has always been associated with French state power and representation , under many modalities that have varied within the vast building and across its long history . Percier and Fontaine thus captured something of the long-term identity of the Louvre when they described it in 1833 as viewed as the shrine of [ French ] monarchy , now much less devoted to the usual residence of the sovereign than to the great state functions , pomp , festivities , solennities and public ceremonies . The uses of the Louvre Palace for purposes of museum exhibitions are covered in the respective articles Louvre ( including the history of past displays in the Louvre Museum of artefacts that have now been moved to other locations ) and Musée des Arts Décoratifs , Paris . Military facility . The Louvre started as a military facility and retained military uses during most of its history . The initial rationale in 1190 for building a reinforced fortress on the western end of the new fortifications of Paris was the lingering threat of English-held Normandy . After the construction of the Wall of Charles V , the Louvre was still part of the defensive arrangements for the city , as the wall continued along the Seine between it and the farther west , but it was no longer on the frontline . In the next centuries , there was no rationale for specific defenses of the Louvre against foreign invasion , but the palace long retained defensive features such as moats to guard against the political troubles that regularly engulfed Paris . The Louvre hosted a significant arsenal in the 15th and most of the 16th centuries , until its transfer in 1572 to the facility that is now the Bibliothèque de lArsenal . From 1697 on , the French states collection of plans-reliefs was stored in the Grande Galerie , of which it occupied all the space by 1754 with about 120 items placed on wooden tables . The plans-reliefs were used to study and prepare defensive and offensive siege operations of the fortified cities and strongholds they represented . In 1777 , as plans started being made to create a museum in the Grande Galerie , the plans-reliefs were removed to the Hôtel des Invalides , where most of them are still displayed in the Musée des Plans-Reliefs . Meanwhile , a collection of models of ships and navy yards , initially started by naval engineer Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau , was displayed between 1752 and 1793 in a next to the Académie des Sciencess rooms on the first floor of the Lescot Wing . That collection later formed the core of the maritime museum created in 1827 , which remained at the Louvre until 1943 and is now the Musée national de la Marine . During Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion , the new building program included barracks for the Imperial Guard in the new North ( Richelieu ) Wing , and for the Cent-gardes Squadron in the South ( Denon ) Wing . Feudal apex . The round keep of Philip IIs Louvre Castle became the symbolic location from which all the kings fiefs depended . The traditional formula for these , that they depended on the king for his great keep of the Louvre ( ) remained in use until the 18th century , long after the keep itself had been demolished in the 1520s . Archive . Philip II also created a permanent repository for the royal archive at the Louvre , following the loss of the French kings previously itinerant records at the Battle of Fréteval ( 1194 ) . That archive , known as the Trésor des Chartes , was relocated under Louis IX to the Palais de la Cité in 1231 . A number of state archives were again lodged in the Louvres vacant spaces in the 18th century , e.g . the minutes of the in the attic of the Lescot Wing , and the archives of the Conseil du Roi in several ground-floor rooms in the late 1720s . The kingdoms diplomatic archives were kept in the Pavillon de lHorloge until their transfer to Versailles in 1763 , after which the archives of the Maison du Roi and of the soon took their place . In 1770 , the archives of the Chambre des Comptes were placed in the Louvres attic , followed by the archives of the Marshals of France in 1778 and those of the Order of Saint Michael in 1780 . In 1825 , after the Conseil dÉtat had been relocated to the Lemercier Wing , its archives were moved to the entresol below the Grande Galerie , near the . Prison . The Louvre became a high-profile prison in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 , as Ferdinand , Count of Flanders was taken into captivity by Philip II . Ferdinand stayed there for 12 years . Other celebrity inmates included Enguerrand IV de Coucy in the 1250s , Guy , Count of Flanders in 1304 , Louis de Dampierre in 1310 , Enguerrand de Marigny in 1314 , John of Montfort in 1341-1345 , Charles II of Navarre in 1356 , and Jean III de Grailly from 1372 to his death there in 1375 . The Louvre was reserved for high-ranking prisoners , while other state captives were held in the Grand Châtelet . Its use as a prison declined after the completion of the Bastille in the 1370s , but was not ended : for example , Antoine de Chabannes was held at the Louvre in 1462–1463 , John II , Duke of Alençon in 1474-1476 , and Leonora Dori in 1617 upon the assassination of her husband Concino Concini at the Louvres entrance following Louis XIIIs orders . Treasury . Under Philip II and his immediate successors , the royal treasure was kept in the Paris precinct of the Knights Templar , located at the present-day Square du Temple . King Philip IV created a second treasury at the Louvre , whose first documented evidence dates from 1296 . Following the suppression of the Templars Order by the same Philip IV in the early 14th century , the Louvre became the sole location of the kings treasury in Paris , which remained there in various forms until the late 17th century . In the 16th century , following the reorganization into the in 1523 , it was kept in one of the remaining medieval towers of the Louvre Castle , with a dedicated guard . Place of worship . By contrast to the Palais de la Cité with its soaring Sainte-Chapelle , the religious function was never particularly prominent at the Louvre . The royal household used the nearby Saint-Germain lAuxerrois as their parish church . The Louvres first chapel , built by Louis IX in the 1230s , was of modest size . At the time when Louis XIV resided at the Louvre , a new chapel was established on the first floor of the Pavillon de lHorloge and consecrated on as Our Lady of Peace and of Saint Louis , the reference to peace being made in the context of negotiation with Spain that resulted later that year in the Treaty of the Pyrenees . This room was of double height , including what is now the pavilions second floor ( or attic ) . In 1915 , the Louvres architect considered restoring that volume to its original height of more than 12 meters , but did not complete that plan . In planning the Louvres expansion and reunion with the Tuileries , Napoleon insisted that a major church should be part of the complex . In 1810 Percier and Fontaine made plans to build it on the northern side of the present-day Cour Napoléon . Its entrance would have been through a new protruding structure now known as the , facing the symmetrical entrance of the Louvre museum on the southern side in the . The church was to be dedicated to Saint Napoleon , a hitherto obscure figure promoted by Napoleon as patron saint of his incipient dynasty ( Napoleon also instituted a national holiday on his birthday on 15 August and called it the ) . It was intended to equal in greatness and magnificence that of the Château de Versailles ( i.e . the Palace Chapel ) . Percier and Fontaine initiated work on the Rotonde de Beauvais , which was completed during Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion , but the construction of the main church building was never started . Ceremonial venue . The Louvre became a premier space for state and public ceremonies in Paris from at least the very beginning of the 14th century . In 1303 , the Louvre was the venue of the second-ever meeting of Frances Estates General , in the wake of the first meeting the previous year ; they were held in the of the castles western wing . On the occasion of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IVs visit to Paris in 1377-1378 , the main banquet was held at the Palais de la Cité but the French king used the Louvres on the next day to give a major speech on his political position in the conflict now known as the Hundred Years War . The medieval Louvres western wing was were the ceremonial spaces were located , and that geography did not change with the 16th centurys reconstruction as Lescot Wing . Following the latter , most major functions were held either on the ground-floor room now known as , or in the first-floor room then known under various names ( see above ) and now as the . A number of betrothals and weddings were concluded and celebrated at the Louvre . These included the betrothal of Henry of Brabant and Joan of Valois on , the weddings of Charles of Orléans and Isabella of Valois on , of John of Brittany and Joan of France on , of Charles of France and Marie of Anjou on , of Francis of Nevers and Marguerite of Bourbon-La Marche on , of Francis of France and Mary Stuart on , of Duke Charles III of Lorraine and Claude of France on ; the betrothal of Edward VI of England and Elisabeth of Valois on ; the weddings of Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois on , of François de Bourbon and Jeanne de Coesme on , of Louis II of Condé ( the Grand Condé ) and Claire-Clémence de Maillé on , of Charles Amadeus of Savoy and Élisabeth de Bourbon on , of Armand de Bourbon and Anne Marie Martinozzi on , and of Henri Jules of Condé and Anne Henriette of Bavaria on . Another grimmer occasion was just after the assassination of King Henry IV , when the kings coffin was put to lay in state in the of the Lescot Wing . During the Bourbon Restoration , the Lescot Wings first-floor room , recreated by Percier and Fontaine as the , was used for the ceremonial sessions of the parliament , even though the ordinary sessions were held in other buildings - the Palais Bourbon for the Lower Chamber and the Luxembourg Palace for the Chamber of Peers . From 1857 onwards , the new in the South ( Denon ) Wing of Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion was used for similar purposes . That role of the Louvre disappeared following the end of the French monarchy in 1870 . Royal residence . For centuries , the seat of executive power in Paris had been established at the Palais de la Cité , at or near the spot where Julian had been proclaimed Roman Emperor back in 360 CE . The political turmoil that followed the death of Philip IV , however , led to the emergence of rival centers of power in and around Paris , of which the Louvre was one . In 1316 Clementia of Hungary , the widow of recently deceased king Louis X , spent much of her pregnancy at the Château de Vincennes but resided at the Louvre when she gave birth to baby king John I on , who died five days later . John was thus the only king of France born at the Louvre , and one of only two who died there ( the other one being Henry IV on following his fatal stabbing in the rue de la Ferronnerie ) . Philip VI occasionally resided at the Louvre , as documented by some of his letters in mid-1328 . King John II is also likely to have resided at the Louvre in 1347 , since his daughter Joan of Valois was betrothed there to Henry of Brabant on , and his short-lived daughter Marguerite was born at the Louvre on . Charles V of France , who had survived the invasion of the Cité by Étienne Marcels partisans in 1358 , decided that a less central location would be preferable for his safety . In 1360 he initiated the construction of the Hôtel Saint-Pol , and upon becoming king in 1364 started transforming the Louvre into a permanent royal residence . After Charles Vs death , his successor Charles VI mainly stayed at the Hôtel Saint-Pol , but as he was incapacitated by mental illness , his wife Isabeau of Bavaria resided in the Louvre and ruled from there . Later 15th-century kings did not reside in the Louvre , nor did either Francis I or Henry II even as they partly converted the Louvre as a Renaissance palace . The royal family only came back to reside in the newly rebuilt complex following Catherine de’ Medici’s abandonment of the Hôtel des Tournelles after her husband Henry II’s traumatic death there in July 1559 . From then , the king and court would stay mainly in the Louvre until Louis XIVs departure in 1666 , albeit with two significant interruptions , at the height of the French Wars of Religion between 1588 and 1594 , and during Louis XIVs minority and the Fronde between 1643 and 1652 . The royal family and court also made frequent stays in alternative palaces , especially at Vincennes ( where Charles IX died on ) , Saint-Germain-en-Laye ( where Louis XIV was born on and Louis XIII died on ) , and the Fontainebleau ( where Louis XIII was born on ) . The child Louis XV also briefly resided in the Louvres in 1719 , as the Tuileries were undergoing refurbishment . Both Louis XIV in the 1660s and Napoleon in the 1810s made plans to establish their main residence in the Colonnade Wing , but none of these respective projects came to fruition . Library . Charles V was renowned for his interest in books ( thus his moniker which translates as learned as well as wise ) , and in 1368 established a library of about 900 volumes on three levels inside the northwestern tower of the Louvre , then renamed from to . The next year he appointed , one of his officials , as the librarian . This action has been widely viewed as foundational , transitioning from the kings prior practice of keeping books as individual objects to organizing a collection with proper cataloguing ; as such , Charles Vs library is generally considered a precursor to the French National Library , even though it was dismantled in the 15th century . In 1767 , a project to relocate the Royal Library inside the Louvre was presented by Jacques-Germain Soufflot , endorsed by Superintendent de Marigny and approved by Louis XV , but remained stillborn for lack of funds . A similar project was endorsed by Napoleon from February 1805 , for which Percier and Fontaine planned a new Library wing as the centerpiece of their program to fill the space between Louvre and Tuileries , but it was not implemented either . A separate and smaller was formed from book collections seized during the Revolution and grew during the 19th centurys successive regimes . Initially located in the Tuileries in 1800 , it was moved to the Grande Galeries entresol in 1805 . In 1860 it was moved to a new space created by Lefuel on the second floor of the new North ( Richelieu ) Wing of Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion , whose main pavilion on the rue de Rivoli was accordingly named . The new library was served by an elegant staircase , now , and was decorated by and Alexandre-Dominique Denuelle . Sadly , it was destroyed by arson in May 1871 at the same time as the Tuileries , and only a few of its precious holdings could be saved . Yet another library , the ( BCMN ) , was gradually developed by the curators , mainly during the 20th century , and located on half of the attic of the Cour Carrées southern wing , on the river-facing side . The transfer of its collections to the new Institut National dHistoire de lArt was planned in the 1990s and executed in early 2016 after much delay . Several smaller libraries remain in the Louvre : a in the BCMNs former spaces , open to the public ; a specialized scholarly library on art of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East , located on the and thus known as the ; and two other specialized libraries , respectively on painting in the and decorative arts in the . Guest residence for foreign sovereigns and royals . The Louvre was the Parisian home of the Emperors who came to visit France : Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV stayed there in early 1378 ; Byzantine Emperor Manuel II from June 1400 to November 1402 , using it as his base for several trips across Europe ; Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in March and April 1416 ; and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1539–1540 . In the late 1640s as the royal family had temporarily left the Louvre , Queen Henrietta Maria of England spent some of her Parisian exile in the apartment of the Queen Mother , on the ground floor of the southern wing of the Cour Carrée , where in early February 1649 she learned about the execution of her husband Charles I . In 1717 , the was made available to Peter the Great during his visit in Paris , but the Czar preferred to stay in the less grandiose . In 1722 , the same apartment became the temporary residence of Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain , who was promised to marry the young Louis XV . She stayed there three years , after which diplomatic developments led to the cancelation of the marriage project and to her return to Spain . This episode remains in the name of the garden in front of the Petite Galerie , known since as the . The courtyard on the other side of the wing , previously known as , was also known as the for much of the 18th century ( and later , now ) . In the 1860s , Napoleon III decided to create a prestige apartment for visiting sovereigns in the Aile de Flore , close to his own apartment in the Tuileries Palace . Lefuel designed it with a monumental , the decoration of which he led between 1873 and 1878 even though the monarchy had fallen in the meantime . That project , however , was left unfinished , and in 1901-1902 its richly decorated upper section was repurposed into a room which is now the study gallery of the Louvres department of graphical arts . Entertainment venue . Entertainment performances such as tournaments , games , balls and theater were a core part of court life at the time when the Louvre was a royal residence . In 1610 , a gladiator-style fight between a man and a lion was organized in the Louvres courtyard , which King Henry IV watched from inside the building . Theatrical representations were particularly significant in the period following the return of the court to the Louvre in 1652 . Molière first performed in front of the king in the large first-floor room of the Lescot Wing on , playing his and . Following that performances success , he was granted use of a space first in the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon and then , after the latters demolition to make space for the Louvre Colonnade , at the Palais-Royal . Molière again performed at the Louvre on when he directed , with Louis XIV himself playing a cameo role as an Egyptian , in the main room of the Queen Mother on the ground floor of the Cour Carrées southern wing . On , Jean Racines was created at the Louvre in Louis XIVs presence . Some lavish entertainment performances left such a mark on collective memory that parts of the Louvre came to be named after them . Thus , the Place du Carrousel preserves the memory of the of 5-6 June 1662 , and the Pavillon de Flore is named after the that was first performed there on . Napoleon decided to build a new venue for the Paris Opera as part of his project to complete the Louvre and its reunion with the Tuileries . In 1810 Percier and Fontaine planned a new opera house north of what is now the Cour Napoléon , on a similar footprint to the present-day , with main entrance on the northern side facing the Palais-Royal . That project , however , was not implemented . Nor was Napoleon IIIs plan in the 1860s to build a large theater room in the Aile de Marsan as a symmetrical counterpart to the he created in the southern Aile de Flore . In 1996 , the Comédie-Française opened the in the underground spaces of the Carrousel du Louvre , its third venue ( after its main Palais-Royal facility and the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier ) . Residence of artists and craftsmen . On , Henry IV published letters patent heralding his decision to invite hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work on the floors under the Grande Galerie . Simultaneously , Henry established a tapestry factory there , which remained until its transfer to the Gobelins Manufactory in 1671 . Creators who lived under the Grande Galerie in the 17th and 18th centuries included Louis Le Vau , Théophraste Renaudot from 1648 to 1653 , André Charles Boulle , Jean-Baptiste Pigalle , Augustin Pajou , Maurice Quentin de La Tour , Claude-Joseph Vernet , Carle Vernet , Horace Vernet ( who was born there ) , Jean-Baptiste Greuze , Jean-Honoré Fragonard , and Hubert Robert . Following the departure of the royal court to Versailles in the 1670s , a number of individuals , many of which were artists , obtained the privilege to establish their residence in parts of the formerly royal palace . These included Jacques-Louis David in the southeastern corner of the Cour Carrée and Charles-André van Loo in the Galerie dApollon . On , Napoleon had the artists and others who lived in the Cour Carrée all expelled , and in 1806 put a final end to the creators lodgings under the Grande Galerie . Royal mint . In July 1609 , Henry IV transferred the mint to a space the Grande Galerie , from its previous location on the Île de la Cité . The Louvre mint specialized in the production of medals , tokens and commemorative coins , and was correspondingly known as the , whereas common coin kept being produced at the on behind Saint-Germain lAuxerrois as had been the case since the 13th century . The Louvres medals mint was led by prominent artists that included Guillaume Dupré , Jean Varin , and . It closed during the French Revolution but was revived in 1804 by Vivant Denon . By imperial decree of , it was relocated from the Louvre to the Hôtel des Monnaies where the had moved in 1775 . Residence of senior courtiers and officials . In the 17th century , the second floor of the Pavillon du Roi was the home of Charles dAlbert , duc de Luynes until 1621 , then of Gaston , Duke of Orléans , and from 1652 of Cardinal Mazarin who also establishes his nieces in thee second-floor attic of the Lescot Wing. . Nicolas Fouquet and his successor Jean-Baptiste Colbert similarly lived on the upper floors of the Pavillon du Roi , above the Kings bedchamber . New prestige apartments for regime dignitaries were created as part of Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion . The main one , in the North ( Richelieu ) Wing , was used by Charles de Morny and after 1871 became the apartment of the Finance Minister . As such it featured prominently in Raymond Depardon’s documentary , shot during the presidential election campaign of then minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in early 1974 . The apartment was renovated in the early 1990s and is now a part of the Louvres decorative arts department , known as . Another official apartment was created for the imperial Great Equerry ( ) , in the South ( Denon ) Wing , with entrance through an ornate portico in the . Part of that large apartment was converted in the 1990s into the museums exhibition space for northern European sculpture , while another part has been used since 1912 as offices for the Louvres director and their staff . Lefuel also created two successive apartments for the Louvres director Émilien de Nieuwerkerke , the first in former rooms of the Académie de peinture , and when these had to be demolished to build the Escalier Daru , on the first floor of the Cour Carrées northern wing . National printing house . A first printing workshop appeared in the Louvre in the 1620s . In 1640 , superintendent François Sublet de Noyers established it as a royal printing house , the , putting an end to the monarchys prior practice of subcontracting its printing tasks to individual entrepreneurs such as Robert Estienne . The royal printing house , soon known as , was first led by and his descendants , then by members of the throughout the 18th century until 1792 . It was relocated to the Hôtel de Toulouse in 1795 , then the in 1809 . In the early 1850s in the early stages of Napoleon IIIs Louvre expansion , projects were made to relocate the national printing house ( then known as ) in the new building of the Louvre , now the Richelieu Wing . These plans were criticized by Ludovic Vitet among others , and were not implemented . Academic and educational facility . In the late 17th century , the Louvre started to become the seat of the French royal academies . First , in 1672 Colbert allowed the Académie Française to meet on the ground floor of the Pavillon du Roi , in the Guards Room of the former Queen Mothers apartment . Soon the Académie moved to the ground floor of the Lemercier Wing on the Cour Carrée , and also maintained its library there . The Académie des Inscriptions joined it in nearby rooms . The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture had been established in the Grande Galerie until 1661 , and returned to the Louvre in 1692 , establishing itself in the Salon Carré and the nearby wing built by Le Vau on the , next to the where a number of the kings paintings were kept . The Académie royale darchitecture moved to the Queens apartment ( in the southern wing of the Cour Carrée ) in 1692 . After a fire in 1740 it moved to the ground floor of the north wing . The Académie des Sciences also moved to the Louvre in the 1690s , and in 1699 moved from the ground-floor to the former kings room , namely the , the ( antechamber ) and the former ( now which was partitioned at that time . The , a diplomats training school , took over in the 1710s the large room on the third floor of the Pavillon de lHorloge ( now partitioned into offices ) . From 1725 , the Salon Carré , recently vacated with the return to Spain of the child Mariana Victoria , was used by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture for its yearly exhibition , which took from it its name of Salon . From 1763 , the Académie also overtook the Galerie dApollon . During the French Revolution , all academies were deemed to be fatally tainted by the Ancien régime associations and terminated on . Barely more than two years later , however , they were recreated as the Institut de France on , ceremonially inaugurated in the Lescot Wings ground-floor room ( the Louvres ) on . On Napoleon decided to relocate the Institut from the Louvre to its current seat at the former Collège des Quatre-Nations , which had been closed in 1791 . The Salon restarted on a yearly basis in the Salon Carré , until the Revolution of 1848 . That year , the Louvres energetic new director Philippe-Auguste Jeanron had it relocated to the Tuileries , so that the Salon Carré could be fully devoted to the museums permanent exhibition . From 1857 the salon moved on from there to the newly built Palais de lIndustrie . The École du Louvre was created in 1882 with the mission to extract from the collections the knowledge they contain , and to train curators , missionaries and excavators . The schools curriculum originally focused on archaeology but soon expanded to related disciplines , such as art history and museography . In the early years , the schools sessions were held in the in two rooms of the former apartment of the great equerry , with entrance from the quayside . A large underground classroom , the named after art historian and Louvre curator Louis Courajod , was built in 1932 on architect Albert Ferrans design under the . It was replaced in the 1990s by the still larger , also underground on the northern end of the Carrousel du Louvre . The former was then transformed into exhibition rooms in which the Louvres Coptic art collection is now displayed , including the architectonic pieces from Bawit . Securities exchange . The national securities exchange ( or ) was located at the Louvre between and , in the former apartment of the Queen Mother ( on the southern wing of the Cour Carrée and/or of the Petite Galerie ) . This followed nearly two years of closure during which off-exchange speculation on Assignats went wild , after decades of operation of the Bourse in the Hôtel de Nevers from to . In September 1795 the Bourse again closed for a few months ; it reopened in January 1796 in the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires where it stayed until 1807 . Administrative office building . During the Ancien Régime , administrative staff numbers in the machinery of government remained small and were dwarfed by the number of courtiers and domestic servants . That changed in the 19th century as the administrative arms of the state became increasingly significant , and the Louvre as a quintessential government building reflected that new reality . In 1824 , the first floor of the Lemercier Wing on the western side of the Cour Carrée was awarded to the Conseil dÉtat , which remained there until 1832 . The painted ceilings of that era are still preserved , with law-related allegorical themes . The office footprint within the Louvre increased considerably with Napoleon IIIs expansion . The new North ( Richelieu ) Wing included offices for the , the short-lived ( 1858-1860 ) , the ( separated from the in 1860 ) , and ( briefly ) the created in early 1870 , as well as the Directorate of Telegraphs . On , a mere few days after the Tuileries fire , Frances government head Adolphe Thiers attributed all administrative offices and barracks space in the Louvres northern wing to the French Finance Ministry , whose buildings on the other side of the rue de Rivoli had been entirely destroyed . The Finance Ministry remained there for more than a century , until the late 1980s . A meeting of finance ministers of the Group of Seven countries , hosted at the Louvre on , gave its name to the Louvre Accord . Further west , projects were made in the 1880s to relocate the National Court of Audit ( ) - whose previous offices in the Palais dOrsay , where the Musée dOrsay now stands , had also been burned down - in the which had just been reconstructed and expanded by Lefuel . Only archives of the Court were deposited there , however , and these spaces were eventually attributed in 1897 to what is now the Musée des Arts Décoratifs . From 1878 the Aile de Flore was used by the Prefect of the Seine Department and the Municipal Council of Paris which held its meetings in Napoleon IIIs Salle des Sessions , following the destruction of the Hôtel de Ville at the end of the Commune . They moved back into the reconstructed Hôtel de Ville in the early 1890s , after which the Ministry of Colonies was installed in the Flore Wing from 1893 to 1909 . The museum then planned to expand into the Flore Wing but that was thwarted during World War I as the facility was used by the wartime bond issuance service . The Finance Ministry , together with the it created in 1933 , remained there and stayed until 1961 . The Louvre museum itself keeps offices in various parts of the building , e.g . in the former apartment of the Great Equerry ( museum direction ) , on the top floors of the Pavillon de lHorloge , and in part of the entresol under the Grande Galerie . Sculpture garden . While the Louvre is rich with architectural sculpture , its position in the midst of a bustling city neighborhood was long unfavorable to the display of freestanding sculpture , with few exceptions that included the temporary display of a colossal statue of Vulcan in the Louvres courtyard during Charles Vs visit in 1540 . That changed during the 19th century , however , as the Louvres open spaces multiplied and the public taste for sculpture and monuments simultaneously increased . An early project was made in the late 1820s to place the Great Sphinx of Tanis in the center of the Cour Carrée , but was not implemented . Instead , on an equestrian statue of Ferdinand Philippe , Duke of Orléans was placed on that spot , itself a second cast of a monument by Carlo Marochetti erected in Algiers earlier that year . But that did not last long , and the statue was relocated to Versailles shortly after the Revolution of 1848 ( it was moved again in 1971 to its present location at the Château dEu ) . Early Second Empire plans to erect equestrian statues of Francis I in the Cour Carrée ( by Auguste Clésinger ) and Louis XIV and Napoleon respectively in the two squares of the Cour Napoléon were left unrealized . Sculpted monuments mushroomed around the Louvre in the late 19th and early 20th century . Most of them were removed in 1933 on the initiative of Education Minister Anatole de Monzie , due to changing tastes : - Marble monument to François Boucher by Jean-Paul Aubé ( 1890 ) , in the , removed in 1933 and now at the Municipal Museum in Longwy - Equestrian statue of Diego Velázquez by Emmanuel Frémiet ( 1892 ) , in the , relocated in 1933 to the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid and destroyed during the Spanish Civil War - Marble version of the group titled , a celebration of the resistance of Belfort during the Franco-Prussian War by Antonin Mercié , installed in 1894 in the Carrousel Garden , removed in 1933 and now at Fort Mont-Valérien - Marble statue of Ernest Meissonier by Antonin Mercié ( 1895 ) , in the , removed in 1966 and relocated in 1980 in the at Poissy - Monument to Auguste Raffet by Emmanuel Frémiet ( 1896 ) , in the , bronze parts melted in the early 1940s during the German occupation , the rest removed in 1966 - Bronze statue of Jean-Léon Gérôme sculpting his Gladiators , by Aimé Morot ( 1909 ) , in the , removed in 1967 and now at the Musée dOrsay - Marble statue of Paris during the War 1914-1918 by Albert Bartholomé ( 1921 ) , removed in 1933 and kept in a damaged state in the Bois de Vincennes In 1907 , then an undersecratary of state in charge of Frances fine arts policy , fostered the creation of a sculpture garden in the western octagonal garden of the Cour Napoléon , dubbed the campo santo . The monumental bronze group Le Temps et le Génie de l’Art by Victor Ségoffin was placed in the center in 1908 . Around it were allegorical and commemorative sculptures : - The sons of Cain , bronze by Paul Landowski ( 1906 ) , now in the Tuileries Garden - Architecture , Côte-dOr stone , also by Landowski ( 1908 ) , since 1933 on in Reims , - Painting , marble by ( 1909 ) , now at the in Le Mans - Pierre de Montreuil , marble by Henri Bouchard ( 1909 ) , since 1935 in a public garden next to the Basilica of Saint-Denis - Michel Colombe , bronze by Jean Boucher ( 1909 ) , moved to Tours in 1933 and melted in 1942 - Puget , marble by François-Léon Sicard ( 1910 ) , since 1933 on in Marseille - Poussin , marble by Constant Roux ( 1911 ) , since 1934 in Les Andelys - Hardouin-Mansart , bronze by Ernest Henri Dubois ( 1908 ) , since the 1930s at the of Les Invalides - Watteau , marble by Henri-Édouard Lombard ( 1909 ) , since 1937 in front of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes - Houdon , marble by Paul Gasq ( 1909 ) , since 1935 in Lisieux - Corot , marble by François-Raoul Larche ( 1908 ) , since 1935 in Ville-dAvray Two more memorials , of Rude by Sicard and Chardin by Larche , were commissionned but not completed . All these sculptures , except Landowskis Sons of Cain , were also removed in 1933 . Ségoffins group was transferred to the southern French town of Saint-Gaudens in 1935 , and melted down during World War II . Landowskis Sons of Cain was eventually moved in 1984 to its current location on the of the Tuileries Garden . In the eastern octagonal garden , an , by Paul Wayland Bartlett , was erected in 1908 . This initiative had been sponsored in 1899 by American diplomat Robert John Thompson in gratitude of the French gift of the Statue of Liberty , and originally intended for a dedication at Lafayettes grave at the Picpus Cemetery during the Exposition Universelle of 1900 . In preparation for the Grand Louvre remodeling , the Lafayette monument was moved in 1985 to its current location on the Cours-la-Reine . In 1964 , Culture Minister André Malraux decided to install in the Carrousel Garden 21 bronze sculptures by Aristide Maillol which had been donated to the French state by the sculptors former model and muse , Dina Vierny , including casts of Air , Action in Chains , The Mountain , and The River . The Maillol statues were rearranged during the overhaul of the garden in the 1990s . Most recently , as part of the Grand Louvre project designed by I . M . Pei , a cast made in lead in 1986 of the marble Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Gian Lorenzo Bernini has been placed in the Cour Napoléon , in front of the Louvre Pyramid and marking the end of Pariss . This was intended as a tribute to Berninis past role as architect of the Louvre in 1664-1666 , even though his plans were not executed . Research facility . The was created in 1932 to support research on paintings and leverage new analysis techniques . In 1968 it became the , with a national mandate but still located at the Louvre . In 1998 , this laboratory wwas merged with the to form the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France ( C2RMF ) , located in the Pavillon de Flore . Shopping and dining venue . In addition to cafés inside the museum , namely the and in the eponymous pavilions , two restaurants are established in the Louvre Palace above ground : - The , opened in 1994 in the Richelieu Wing with a terrace on the Cour Napoléon , named after the Louvres nearby and designed by - , opened in 2016 in the Aile de Marsan with a terrace on the Carrousel Garden , designed by Joseph Dirand and replacing a previous restaurant on the same spot called More restaurants have operated underground since the opening of the Grand Louvre spaces in the late 1980s and early 1990s , respectively below the Louvre Pyramid and in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall . Chronological plan of the construction of the Louvre . The oldest part of the above-ground Louvre is the southwest corner of the square block that faces the center of Paris to the east . This corner section , consisting of the Lescot Wing ( 1 ) and the north side of the western part of the south wing ( 2 ) , was designed and constructed in the 16th century by Pierre Lescot , who replaced the corresponding wings of the medieval Louvre ( not shown ) . Later that century , the Petite Galerie ( 4 ) was added , connecting the Louvre to the section of the wall of Charles V which ran along the north bank of the Seine toward the Tuileries Palace ( 3 , 5 , 8 , 11 , 14 ; destroyed by fire in 1871 ) . Around 1600 , during the reign of Henry IV , the wall along the river was replaced with the Grande Galerie ( 6 , 7 ) , which provided a covered passage from the Louvre to Tuileries Palace and later was the first part of the Louvre to become a museum . The Lescot Wing was expanded north with the Lemercier Wing ( 9 ) under Louis XIII , and in the second half of the 17th century , during the reign of Louis XIV , the Petite Galerie was enlarged ( 10 , 13 ) and the remaining wings around the Square Court ( 12 , 16 ) were constructed , but not totally completed until the first part of the 19th century under Napoleon , who also added the Arc du Carrousel ( 17 ) and parts of the north wing ( 17 ) along the rue de Rivoli . Later in the 19th century , the north wing was slightly extended ( 18 ) by Louis XVIII . From 1852 to 1857 , Napoleon III connected the north wing to the buildings surrounding the Square Court with the Richelieu Wing ( 19 , north part ) and enlarged the Grande Galerie with the Denon Wing ( 19 , south part ) . In 1861–1870 his architect Hector Lefuel carried out further work , replacing the Pavillon de Flore and the western section of the Grande Galerie ( 7 ) and adding the Pavillon des Sessions ( 20 , also known as the Pavillon des États ) . In 1874–1880 he replaced the Pavillon de Marsan ( 15 ) and extended the south facade of the adjacent Marsan Wing ( 21 ) . References . - Ballon , Hilary ( 1991 ) . The Paris of Henri IV : Architecture and Urbanism . Cambridge , Massachusetts : The MIT Press . . - Berger , Robert W . ( 1993 ) . The Palace of the Sun : The Louvre of Louis XIV . University Park : The Pennsylvania State University Press . . - Berty , Adolphe ( 1868 ) . Topographie historique du vieux Paris . Région du Louvre et des Tuileries . Tome 2 . Paris : Imprimerie Impériale . Copy at Gallica . - Bezombes , Dominique , editor ( 1994 ) . The Grand Louvre : History of a Project . Paris : Moniteur . . - Biasini , Émile ; Lebrat , Jean ; Bezombes , Dominique ; Vincent , Jean-Michel ( 1989 ) . The Grand Louvre : A Museum Transfigured 1981–1993 . Paris : Electa Moniteur . . - Blunt , Anthony ; Beresford , Richard ( 1999 ) . Art and architecture in France , 1500–1700 . New Haven : Yale University Press . . - Bresc-Bautier , Genevieve ( 1995 ) . The Louvre : An Architectural History . New York : The Vendome Press . . - Briggs , Keith ( 2008 ) . The Domesday Book castle LVVRE . Journal of the English Place-Name Society , vol . 40 , pp . 113–118 . Retrieved 16 February 2013 . - Christ , Yvan ( 1949 ) . Le Louvre et les Tuileries : Histoire architecturale dun double palais . [ Paris ] : Éditions Tel . . - Edwards , Henry Sutherland ( 1893 ) . Old and New Paris : Its History , Its People , and Its Places . Paris : Cassell . View at Google Books . Retrieved 30 April 2008 . - Hautecoeur , Louis ( 1940 ) . Histoire du Louvre : Le Château – Le Palais – Le Musée , des origines à nos jours , 1200–1940 , 2nd edition . Paris : Administration provisoire dimprimerie . . - Lowry , Bates ( 1956 ) . Palais du Louvre , 1528–1624 : The Development of a Sixteenth-Century Architectural Complex ( thesis/dissertation ) . University of Chicago . . ProQuest - Mignot , Claude ( 1999 ) . The Pocket Louvre : A Visitors Guide to 500 Works . New York : Abbeville Press . . - Ochterbeck , Cynthia Clayton , editor ( 2009 ) . The Green Guide Paris , pp . 168–201 . Greenville , South Carolina : Michelin Maps and Guides . . - Sauval , Henri ( 1724 ) . Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris , vol . 2 , Paris : C . Moette and J . Chardon . Copy at Google Books . - Sturdy , David ( 1995 ) . Science and social status : the members of the Académie des sciences 1666–1750 . Woodbridge , Suffolk , U.K. : Boydell Press . . Preview at Google Books . External links . - A virtual visit of the Louvre - Panoramic view of the pyramid and the Cour Napoléon