page_title: Louvre Palace
section_title: Fortress
hierarchical_section_title: Louvre Palace / History / Medieval period (12th–15th centuries) / Fortress
caption_attribution_description: Español: una muestra de como era antes el louvre Français&#160;: Le Louvre de Philippe-Auguste, forteresse médiévale (1190) qui complétait et couvrait l'Enceinte de Philippe-Auguste. Les fondations de la forteresse ont été mis au jour et restaurés lors des travaux d'agrandissement du Musée du Louvre dans les années 1980 [1]
context_page_description: The Louvre Palace is a former royal palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Originally a fortress built in the medieval period, it became a royal palace in the fourteenth century under Charles V and was used from time to time by the kings of France as their main Paris residence. Its present structure has evolved in stages since the 16th century. In 1793 part of the Louvre became a public museum, now the Musée du Louvre, which has expanded to occupy most of the building.
context_section_description: In 1190 King Philip II Augustus, who was about to leave on the Third Crusade, ordered the construction of a defensive enclosure all around Paris. To protect the city against potential invaders from the northwest, he decided to build an especially solid fortress (the original Louvre) just outside one of the wall's most vulnerable points, the junction with the River Seine on the Right Bank. Completed in 1202, the new fortress was situated in what is now the southwest quadrant of the Cour Carrée. (Archaeological discoveries of the original fortress are part of the Medieval Louvre exhibit in the Sully wing of the museum.)
  The original Louvre was nearly square in plan (seventy-eight by seventy-two metres) and enclosed by a 2.6-metre thick crenellated and machicolated curtain wall. The entire structure was surrounded by a water-filled moat.  Attached to the outside of the walls were ten round defensive towers: one at each corner and the centres of the north and west walls, and two pairs flanking the narrow gates in the south and east walls.
  In the courtyard, slightly offset to the northeast, there was a cylindrical keep (the Donjon or Grosse Tour), which was thirty metres high and fifteen metres in diameter with walls 4 metres thick. The keep was encircled by a deep, dry moat 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 west and south sides. The castle was a fortress, but not yet a royal residence; the monarch's Parisian home at the time was the Palais de la Cité.
  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 the size of the Louvre's. It became a symbol of the power of the monarchy and was mentioned in the oath of allegiance to the king, even up to the end of the ancien régime, long after the Grosse Tour was demolished in 1528.
  The Louvre was renovated frequently through the Middle Ages. Under Louis IX in the mid-13th century, the Louvre became the home of the royal treasury. Under the Valois dynasty, it housed a prison and courtrooms.
caption: Remains of the medieval foundations can still be seen on the lower ground floor of the Sully wing
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "Minolta Co., Ltd.", "Image Model": "DiMAGE Z1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver. 1.00", "Image DateTime": "2006:04:02 10:13:02", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "336", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 4, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, 22, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4084", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3081", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/10", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Shutter Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:04:02 10:13:02", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:04:02 10:13:02", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-3/2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF SubjectArea": "[800, 600, 44, 29]", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1118", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "38", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "3"}