The Louvre Palace (French: Palais du Louvre, [palɛ dy luvʁ]), often referred to simply as the Louvre, is a palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a large expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Originally a defensive castle, it has served several 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.
While this area along the Seine had been inhabited for thousands of years, the Louvre's history starts around 1190 with its first construction as the Louvre Castle defending the western front of the Wall of Philip II Augustus, the then new city-wall of Paris. The Louvre's oldest section still standing above ground, its palatial Lescot Wing, dates from the late 1540s, when Francis I started the replacement of the greatly expanded 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. In the late 20th century, the Grand Louvre project increased visitor access and gallery space, including by adding the Louvre Pyramid in the courtyard Cour Napoléon.
For more than three centuries, the history and design of the Louvre was closely intertwined with that of the Tuileries Palace, created to the west of the Louvre by Queen Catherine de' Medici in 1564, with its main block finally demolished in 1883. The French Renaissance style Tuileries was the premier seat of French executive power during the last third of that period, from the return of Louis XVI and his court from Versailles in October 1789 until the palace was set on fire during the Paris Commune of 1871. The Louvre and Tuileries became physically connected as part of the project called the "Grand Design", with the completion of the Pavillon de Flore in the early 1600s. The Pavillon de Flore and Pavillon de Marsan, which used to respectively mark the southern and northern ends of the Tuileries Palace, are now considered part of the Louvre Palace. The Carrousel Garden, first created in the late 19th century (during Napoleon III's Louvre expansion) in what used to be the great courtyard of the Tuileries (or Cour du Carrousel), is now considered part of the Tuileries Garden.
A less high-profile but historically significant dependency of the Louvre was to its immediate east, the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, appropriated by the monarchy following the betrayal of the Constable of Bourbon in 1523 and mostly demolished in October 1660 to give way to the Louvre's expansion. The last remains of the Petit-Bourbon were cleared in the 1760s. Today, the palace has a total floor area of 244,000 m2.
General description
This section 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 Avenue du Général-Lemonnier to its west (thus named since 1957; formerly rue des Tuileries and Avenue Paul-Déroulède, 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 three main open spaces: the eastern Cour Carrée (square courtyard), which is closed by four wings that form the square of its name, the central Cour Napoléon, which is open on its western side onto the thoroughfare known as Place du Carrousel, towards the Carrousel Garden. The rest of the Tuileries Garden lies beyond that.
The Louvre is slightly askew of the Historic Axis (Axe historique), a roughly eight-kilometer (five-mile) architectural line bisecting the city. The axis begins with the Louvre courtyard, at a point now symbolically marked by a lead copy of Bernini's equestrian statue of Louis XIV, and runs west along the Champs-Élysées to La Défense and slightly beyond.
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 buildings 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 after the Louvre's first director Vivant Denon. the Louvre's 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 Aile de Rohan, itself continued by the Aile de Marsan.
The Louvre Museum occupies most of the palace's space, but not all of it. The main other users are at the building's 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" (ailes) and "pavilions" (pavillons) – typically, the pavilions are the blocks at either the end or the center of a wing. In the Louvre's context, the word "wing" does not denote a peripheral location: the Lescot Wing, in particular, was built as the Louvre's 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 Louvre's specific context are called guichets.
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, Sauval's theory is often repeated, even in recent books, but this glossary has never been seen again, and Sauval's idea is viewed as obsolete. Briggs suggests that H. J. Wolf's 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 louveterie, 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 building's 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 Pavillon du Milieu or Gros Pavillon is now generally referred to as Pavillon de l'Horloge, or Pavillon Sully (especially when considered from the west), or also Pavillon Lemercier 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 Pavillon de la Bibliothèque referred to what was later called the Porte Jean-Goujon (still later, Porte Barbet-de-Jouy), 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 Salle Haute, Grande Salle, Salle des Gardes, Salle d'Attente, in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was fragmented into apartments during the 18th century, then recreated in the early 19th and called successively Salle Royale, Salle des Séances Royales or Salle des Etats (the latter also being the name of two other ceremonial rooms, created in the 1850s and 1860s respectively); then as part of the museum, salle des terres cuites, after 1871 Salle La Caze in honor of donor Louis La Caze, Salle des Bronzes, and since 2021 Salle Etrusque. The room immediately below, now known as Salle des Caryatides, has also been called Salle Basse, Salle Basse des Suisses, Grande Salle, Salle des Gardes, Salle des Antiques (from 1692 to 1793), and Salle des Fleuves in the past, among other names.
Sully Wing
The Sully Wing forms a square of approximately 160 m (520 ft) side length. The protruding sections at the corners and center of each side are known as pavillons. Clockwise from the northwest corner, they are named as follows: Pavillon de Beauvais (after a now-disappeared street), Pavillon Marengo (after the nearby rue de Marengo), Pavillon Nord-Est (also Pavillon des Assyriens), Pavillon Central de la Colonnade (also Pavillon Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois), Pavillon Sud-Est (also Pavillon des Egyptiens), Pavillon des Arts, Pavillon du Roi, and Pavillon de l'Horloge, the latter also known as Pavillon Sully. The section between the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon Sully, known as the Lescot Wing (Aile Lescot) 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 (Aile Lemercier). The eastern wing is the Aile de la Colonnade, named after its iconic eastern façade, the Louvre Colonnade.
Denon and Flore Wings
On the southern side of the Cour Napoléon, the Denon Wing's 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 Cour du Sphinx (covered as a glass atrium since 1934), Cour Visconti (ground floor covered since 2012), and Cour Lefuel. On the side of the Seine, this wing starts with the north–south Petite Galerie bordering a side garden known as the Jardin de l'Infante, 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 Guichets du Carrousel, a composition of three monumental arches flanked by two narrow pavilions named respectively after the Duke of Lesdiguières and Henri de La Trémoille (Pavillon Lesdiguières and Pavillon La Trémoille). Further west are the Pavillon des Sessions, a protruding structure on the northern side, the Porte des Lions, a passageway to the quay, the Porte Jaujard 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 Cour Khorsabad (formerly Cour de la Poste), Cour Puget (formerly Cour des Guichets or Cour de l'Horloge), and Cour Marly (formerly Cour d'Honneur or Cour du Ministre). On the side facing the rue de Rivoli, the main salient feature is the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque, which connects to the Pavillon Richelieu through the ground-floor Passage Richelieu (formerly Guichet du Ministère) between the Cour Puget and Cour Marly. Further west are the Pavillon de Rohan and the Aile de Rohan, built in the early 19th century and named after the nearby rue de Rohan, then the Aile de Marsan 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 Hall Napoléon 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. Its apparent stylistic consistency is largely due to conscious efforts of architects over several centuries to echo each other's work and preserve a strong sense of historical continuity, mirroring that of the French monarchy and state; American essayist Adam Gopnik has written that "The continuity the Louvre represents is the continuity of the French state." For example, from the 1620s to the 1650s Jacques Lemercier thoroughly replicated the Lescot Wing's patterns for his design of the northern half of the western wing of the Cour Carrée. In the 1660s Louis Le Vau echoed Lemercier's Pavillon de l'Horloge for his redesign of the central pavillon of the Tuileries Palace further west (burnt in 1871 and demolished in 1883), and mostly continued Lescot's and Lemercier's pattern for the completion of the Cour Carrée. A separate design a few years later for the Louvre Colonnade, included window shapes on the ground level based on Lescot's for the Pavillon du Roi a century earlier, ensuring visual continuity even though the dramatic colonnade on the upper level was different from anything that had been done at the Louvre so far. In the 1810s, Percier and Fontaine copied the giant order of the western section of the Grande Galerie, built in the early 17th century and attributed to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau, for their design of the northern wing to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre along the rue de Rivoli. In the 1850s during Napoleon III's Louvre expansion, architects Louis Visconti then Hector Lefuel built the Denon and Richelieu pavilions as echoes of Lemercier's Pavillon de l'Horloge. In the 1860s and 1870s, Lefuel used designs inspired by the Lescot Wing even as he replaced the prior giant-order patterns created by Androuet du Cerceau and replicated by Percier and Fontaine. Finally, in the 1980s, I. M. Pei made explicit reference to André Le Nôtre, the designer of the Tuileries Garden, for his design of the Louvre Pyramid.