page_title: Louvre Colonnade
section_title: Digging out of the moat
hierarchical_section_title: Louvre Colonnade / Digging out of the moat
caption_attribution_description: English: The lifting of the Louvre pediment stones, 1674
context_page_description: The Louvre Colonnade is the easternmost façade of the Palais du Louvre in Paris.
  It has been celebrated as the foremost masterpiece of French Architectural Classicism since its construction, mostly between 1667 and 1674. The design, dominated by two loggias with trabeated colonnades of coupled giant columns, was created by a committee of three, the Petit Conseil, consisting of Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault. Louis Le Vau's brother, François Le Vau also contributed. Cast in a restrained classicizing baroque manner, it interprets rules laid down by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose works Perrault translated into French.
context_section_description: In 1964, the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, ordered the digging out of the dry moat in front of Perrault’s Colonnade. A characteristic feature of pre-classical French architecture, it is shown in nearly every project and early drawing of the east facade, and its reexcavation revealed the original soubassement, or podium (see the engraving from Blondel's book). The moat may have been filled in around 1674 to facilitate construction (see the engraving by Sébastien Leclerc) and not restored due to lack of funds to build the contrescarpe after Louis XIV's attention shifted to the Palace of Versailles. However, in 1981 Germain Bazin argued that the reconstruction of the moat was misguided, since for aesthetic reasons Louis XIV had never wanted it.
caption: The lifting of the Louvre pediment stones, 1674, engraving by Sébastien Leclerc
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