page_title: Cour Carrée
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Cour Carrée / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: The castle of the Louvre on the en:Merian map of Paris in 1615. Looking to east. On the left and in the background, the walls of the north and of the east which are yet the walls of the medieval castle. In the foreground and on the right, the walls of the west and the south which are palaces in Renaissance style. Français&#160;: Le fr:Château du Louvre sur le plan fr:Pland de Mérian de 1615. Vue vers l'est. A gauche et au fond, les murs du nord et de l'est qui sont toujours ceux du château médiéval. Devant et à droite, les murs de l'ouest et du sud qui sont des palais de style Renaissance.
context_page_description: The Cour Carrée is one of the main courtyards of the Louvre Palace in Paris. The wings surrounding it were built gradually, as the walls of the medieval Louvre Castle were progressively demolished in favour of a Renaissance palace.
context_section_description: Between 1190 and 1215, Philip Augustus built the Wall of Philip II Augustus around Paris to protect the capital from the English. To reinforce this enclosure on the western side, he built the Louvre Castle, a large fortress with four high walls protected by a moat, towers, and a dungeon.
  Under King Charles V of France (1364-1380), with the population of Paris increasing, Paris spread well beyond the Philip Augustus wall. The king built a new enclosure encompassing the new quarters. As the Louvre Castle was now inside the new city walls, it lost much of its military value. The king renovated the castle to make it more comfortable, installing numerous windows, adding chimneys, statues, turrets and gardens.
  After returning from a two-year captivity in Italy and Spain following his defeat at Pavia in 1524, King Francis I of France wanted to transform the old castle of the Louvre into a Renaissance style palace, like those he encountered during his captivity. In 1528, he ordered the demolition of the Grosse Tour (Great Tower), which had served as a keep. This took four months and the tower was replaced by a moat serving the main court of the castle. In 1546, the King asked architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon to further renovate the castle.
  After Francis I's death, his son Henri II (1547–1559) continued the work and oversaw demolition of the west wall, which he replaced with a Renaissance palace of the same length between December 1546 and March 1549. This area, the current Lescot Wing, hosted the Salle des Gardes (Hall of the Guards), today known as the Salle des Caryatides, a room for events which also serves as a ballroom. Many historical events took place there, such as the wedding of  King Henri IV, an episode of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the funeral wake of Henry IV, and the first performance of a Molière play for King Louis XIV on October 16, 1658.
  Henry II then demolished the southern wall and replaced it with the south wing (1553-1556) to pave the way for the creation of the  Pavillon du Roi (King's Pavilion), located at the junction of the south and west wings. At this stage, the building was very heterogeneous since two wings were in the style of a Renaissance palace, while the other two remained in the style of a medieval castle with walls, battlements, and towers.
  Queen Catherine de' Medici focused on building her Tuileries Palace, while Henry IV built the Grande Galerie along the River Seine, also known as the Grande Galerie du Bord de l'Eau (Grand Waterside Gallery), which linked the Louvre and the Tuileries. He also planned to quadruple the size of the courtyard of the Louvre Castle by demolishing the old walls and extending the existing Renaissance wings.
  Louis XIII demolished the north wall of the castle in 1624. Since the Lescot Wing had been built for the small courtyard of the original castle, it was not easy to integrate it into a courtyard with sides twice as long. The new architect, Jacques Lemercier, duplicated this wing to the north, the present Lemercier Wing (1636), and installed a taller pavilion between the two, the Pavillon de l'Horloge.
  Louis XIV had the east wall demolished and renovated by architect Louis Le Vau. The last two walls to be demolished (north and east) were simply razed and the ditches filled. Their foundations remained intact and were rediscovered during excavations of the courtyard in the nineteenth century (1866). During the construction of the Grand Louvre (begun in 1981), basement-level galleries were created for exhibiting the artifacts and architectural remnants of the Medieval Louvre.
  Louis XIV doubled the length of the south wing and built the north wing. Three sides of the courtyard were then in place. It remained to build the east wing, important because it faced the city with houses and buildings nearby. This would be the new main entrance to the Louvre. After a contest launched by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the king decided in 1665 to have the Louvre Colonnade built outside on the east by Claude Perrault and Louis le Vau. The work dragged on because
caption: The Louvre Castle on a 1615 map with two remaining medieval walls and two walls in Renaissance style.
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