Tel. 01-40 20 53 17
Subway: Palais-Royal, Louvre Rivoli, Musee du Louvre
Busses: 21, 27, 39, 48, 68, 69, 72, 95
Open: 9am-6pm Wed-Sun
Closed: Jan 1, May 1, Dec 25
Musee du Louvre is one of the most important museums not only in Paris or France, but all over the World. History of Musee du Louvre starts in the Medieval times when King Philippe- Auguste erected a fortress here in 1190. Later king Francois I transformed imposing castle into a Renaissance building. Over a course of centuries French authorities enlarged and changed the design of Musee dy Louvre. After the French Revolution Musee du Louvre was nationalised and transformed into a public museum in 1793. Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel or Arch of Triumph was built to celebrate military victories of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. Another notable structure is the inverted pyramid that was designed by architect I.M. Pei and constructed in 1989. If you read "Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown you probably will remember that Louvre plays important part in its narration.
Extensive collections of Louvre are the result of a double historical effort. To the collecting developed by the French monarchy along several centuries, the effort of the men of the Enlightenment, the disentailment work of the French Revolution, the military victories during the Napoleonic wars, and the archaeological campaigns and purchases driven throughout XIX century. The opening of the Louvre in 1793 meant, within the history of museums, the transfer of the private collections of the ruling classes (monarchy, aristocracy and Church) to galleries of public property for the enjoyment of society as a whole. That is why the Louvre was the precedent of all the great national museums, and in fact was the model for many of them. It is the most visited art museum in the world, very famous for its masterpieces, especially La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci. The Louvre is one of the largest museums in the world.
At the heart of the Louvre is a castle-fortress - the Great Tower of
the Louvre - erected by King Philip Augustus in 1190. One of the main
purposes of the castle was to watch the lower reaches of the Seine, one
of the traditional routes of invasion and raids of the Viking Age. In
1317, after the transfer of the property of the Templars to the Order of
Malta, the royal treasury was transferred to the Louvre. Charles V turns
the castle into a royal residence.
The outdated Great Tower of
the Louvre was destroyed by order of Francis I in 1528, and in 1546 the
transformation of the fortress into a magnificent royal residence began.
These works were carried out by Pierre Lescaut and continued during the
reigns of Henry II and Charles IX. Two new wings have been attached to
the building. In 1594, Henry IV decides to connect the Louvre with the
Tuileries Palace, built at the request of Catherine de Medici. The
square courtyard of the palace was created by the architects Lemercier,
and then Louis Levo during the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV,
quadrupled the palace. The design and decoration of the palace was then
led by such artists as Poussin, Romanelli and Lebrun. In 1667-1670.
Architect Claude Perrault built the Louvre Colonnade on the eastern
façade of the palace overlooking Louvre Square.
In 1682 work came
to an abrupt halt when Louis XIV chose Versailles as the new royal
residence. Since the 18th century, there has been a growing number of
proposals to turn the Louvre building into a museum. The project is born
in the reign of Louis XV and ends with the French Revolution.
After the revolution, work in the Louvre was continued by Napoleon I.
His architects Percier and Fontaine began the construction of the north
wing along Rivoli Street. This wing was completed in 1852 under Napoleon
III and the Louvre was completed. After the fire and destruction of the
Tuileries, which occurred during the siege of the Paris Commune in May
1871, the Louvre acquired a modern look. In 1989, a glass pyramid was
erected in the center of the Napoleonic courtyard (architect Yo Ming
Pei).
The idea to create a museum in the Louvre to display masterpieces
from the royal collections appeared even before the French Revolution.
In 1792, a decision was made to open the museum, Hubert Robert was
appointed its first curator, who immediately began preparing the future
exposition.
For the first time the doors of the museum were
opened to the public on August 10, 1793, after the revolution. Under the
First Empire, it was called the Napoleon Museum.
Create a
collection
At the beginning of its existence, the Louvre replenished
its funds at the expense of the royal collections collected at the time
by Francis I (Italian paintings) and Louis XIV (the largest acquisition
was 200 paintings by the banker Everard Jabach). At the time of the
founding of the museum, the royal collection consisted of exactly 2500
canvases.
Gradually, the most valuable paintings of the royal
collection were transferred to the museum collection. A huge number of
sculptures came from the Museum of French Sculpture (musée des Monuments
français) and after numerous confiscations of property during the
revolution.
During the Napoleonic Wars, at the suggestion of the
first director of the museum, Baron Denon, the Louvre collection was
replenished with military trophies, at the same time archaeological
finds from Egypt and the Middle East enter the museum. During the 19th
and 20th centuries, the museum's collection was replenished as a result
of many acquisitions and gifts, among the latest - the collection of
Edmund Rothschild, which the museum inherited under the will of the
latter.
The exhibits ended up in the Louvre in various ways. The
most famous paintings of the Louvre - "La Gioconda" by Leonardo da Vinci
and "The Beautiful Gardener" by Raphael - belonged to Francis I, who
acquired Leonardo's personal collection after his death in 1519. Many
paintings ended up in the Louvre as trophies of the Napoleonic army,
especially after the sack of Venice in 1798 (for example, "Marriage at
Cana of Galilee" by Paolo Veronese). Murillo's "Little Beggar" was
purchased by Louis XVI in 1782. Vermer's "Lacemaker" and Dürer's
"Self-Portrait with Thistle" were purchased by the museum in 1870 and
1922, respectively.
The most famous sculptures of the museum are
Venus de Milo, found in 1820 and then acquired by the French ambassador
from the Turkish government, and Nika of Samothrace, found in parts in
1863 on the island of Samothrace by Charles Champoiseau, an
archaeologist and vice-consul of France in Adrianople.
Lance
In 2004, the French government decided to build a satellite
museum of the Louvre on the site of an abandoned coal mine in the
industrial town of Lens in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais.
The reasons for this decision were the overcrowding of the Louvre in
Paris, the increase in the overall attendance of museums in France, as
well as the desire to develop the economy of the northern part of
France. Initially, 6 French cities claimed to open a branch of the
Louvre: Amiens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais, Lens and Valenciennes.
On November 29, 2004, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin chose
Lens, the former center of the French coal industry, to house the
buildings of the new museum, named the Louvre-Lens (Fr. Louvre-Lens). In
2005, the Japanese architectural bureau SANAA was chosen to create a
project for a new museum complex. The museum management expects that the
new building, which can accommodate about 600 pieces of art, will
attract up to 500,000 visitors annually. Starting December 12, 2012, the
new museum is open to the general public.
Abu Dhabi
The Louvre
Abu Dhabi is a branch of the Louvre located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates. The museum includes works from various French museums (Louvre,
Center Pompidou, Musée d'Orsay, Palace of Versailles).
In 2012,
the Louvre Abu Dhabi began collecting photographs, creating a fund from
its own acquisitions. The first exhibition in this branch took place in
May 2009 (Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi). It presented the first 19
acquisitions of the museum. The second exhibition, Birth of a Museum, in
May-August 2013, presented the first major collection of 130 works
purchased by the Government of Abu Dhabi for permanent display. It
includes previously unknown works by Picasso, Bronze Age terracotta
sculpture from Cyprus, and artefacts from Greece, Turkey, Japan and
Syria.
Events called Talking Art Series are held: this is a
platform for discussions about the future of the museum. Here you can
share ideas, engage in dialogue with the general public.
On
September 6, 2017, the Minister of Culture of France, Francoise Nissen,
announced the final date for the opening of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi -
this is November 11 of the same year. The opening ceremony is expected
to be attended by high-ranking official guests led by French President
Emmanuel Macron. The three-story building in the Louvre in Paris, known
as the Clock Pavilion, has been officially renamed in honor of the
founding father of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
The Louvre collections contain masterpieces of art from different
civilizations, cultures and eras. The museum has about 300,000 exhibits,
of which only 35,000 are exhibited in the halls. Many exhibits are kept
in storage because they cannot be shown to visitors for more than three
consecutive months for reasons of safety.
The Louvre exhibits are
divided into the following collections:
The Ancient East
Ancient
Egypt
Ancient Greece, Etruria, Rome
Art of Islam
sculptures
art objects
art
graphic art
History of the Louvre
The eastern collection contains more than 100,000 art objects created
on the territory of the ancient states of the Middle East and
Mesopotamia. The collection of the department covers the historical
period from the Neolithic era to the beginning of Islamic expansion.
The "Assyrian Museum" of the Louvre opened on May 1, 1847, it was
subordinate to the Department of Antiquities that existed at that time.
In 1881, the collection was replenished with objects of the Sumerian
civilization, which led to the creation of a separate department of the
Ancient East.
The Oriental Collection of the Louvre is divided
into three sections:
Mesopotamia
Iran
East Mediterranean Sea
(Syria, Palestine, Cyprus)
The Department of Ancient Egypt was established on May 15, 1826 by
order of Charles X. The first curator of the established Museum of Egypt
was the decipherer of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Jean-Francois
Champollion.
At the moment, the collection of Egyptian
antiquities is divided into 3 parts:
Roman Egypt, Coptic Egypt;
thematic exposition;
chronological display.
The Department of Ancient Greece, Etruria and Rome is the direct
successor of the Department of Antiquity, one of the first two
departments of the museum opened in 1793.
The collection
includes:
Archaic Greece
classical greece
Hellenistic Greece
Etruria
Ancient Rome
Separate halls are devoted to Greek
ceramics, clay and bronze products, and jewelry.
A section of Muslim art has existed in the Art Objects department of the Louvre since 1893. In 1932, a new department of Asian art was created, to which all the works of the Islamic civilization of the Louvre were transferred. In 1945, the works of Asian civilizations were transferred to the Guimet Museum, and the newly created Islamic section remained in the Department of the Ancient Orient of the Louvre. In 1993, the reorganization of the Louvre allowed more than 1000 m² of exhibition space to be allocated to Islamic art, and in 2003 a separate department of Islamic Art was created. The department's collection contains works of Islamic civilization from Spain to India, from the dawn of Islamic civilization to the 19th century.
Initially, only antique statues were presented in the Louvre. The
only exception was the work of Michelangelo.
In 1824, 5 new halls
dedicated to the period from the Renaissance to the 18th century were
opened. In 1850 medieval statues were added to the collection, and in
1893 the Department of Sculptures became independent from the Department
of Antiquity.
One of the richest departments of the museum, whose collection is constantly updated. Here are secular and religious jewelry, figurines, furniture, tapestries. The collection covers the period from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.
The collection contains about 6,000 paintings representing the period from the Middle Ages to 1848. Works dating after 1848 were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay at the time of the creation of the latter.
The graphic arts department today contains more than 135,000
exhibits, divided into three groups:
the Drawings Hall (Le
Cabinet des dessins), which began with the collection of French kings,
and then expanded significantly due to new acquisitions and gifts;
Calcography (Chalcographie) - about 14,000 engravings on copper. It
is possible to order prints from copper originals of about 600
engravings;
The Edmond Rothschild Collection donated to the
Louvre in 1936, containing about 40,000 prints, 3,000 drawings and 500
illustrated books. Due to the huge number of exhibits, as well as the
sensitivity of paper to light, it is not possible to exhibit all of them
permanently. They can be seen either in temporary exhibitions or by
order in a special room (la salle de consultation). In addition, a lot
of work is constantly being done to digitize images.
The History Department of the Louvre opened on July 6, 2016 in the Louvre Clock Pavilion.
Kidnapping of the Mona Lisa
On August 22, 1911, Leonardo da
Vinci's Mona Lisa, which was kept in the Louvre, was stolen. At the
beginning of 1914, the thief of the Mona Lisa, the Italian Vincenzo
Perugia, advertised the sale of the original Mona Lisa. The collector
who responded to the message about the sale reported it to the police.
Soon, the arrested thief of the painting, Leonardo, later stated that
his motive was patriotic, he wanted to return the Mona Lisa to her
homeland, Italy. For another six months, the Gioconda was exhibited in
museums in Italy, after which it was returned to the Louvre with special
security measures.
Evacuation of collections during the Nazi
occupation
At the beginning of World War II, the museum removed and
hid most of the art. When Germany occupied the Sudetenland, the most
valuable works of art, such as the Mona Lisa, were temporarily evacuated
to the Château de Chambord. When war was officially declared a year
later, most of the museum's paintings were also sent there. Selected
sculptures such as the Nike of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo were
sent to the Château de Valence. On August 27, 1939, after two days of
packing, the truck columns began to leave Paris. By December 28, most of
the works were removed from the museum, with the exception of too heavy
and "insignificant", which remained in the basement of the museum. In
early 1945, after the liberation of France, art began to return to the
Louvre.
2016 flood
In June 2016, the water level in the Seine
reached 6 meters, which led to the initialization of the plan to prevent
the risk of flooding (Plan de Prévention des Risques d'Inondation). On
June 2, the museum was closed for one day for the preventive evacuation
of exhibits from potentially flooded museum halls. After a further rise
in the water level, on June 3, the museum was closed until June 7, 2016
inclusive.
Baron Vivant-Denon (1804-1816),
Count Louis de Forbin (1816-1841),
Alphonse de Caillieu (1841-1848)
Emilian de Nieuwerkerke (1850-1852),
Frederic Willot (1870-1874)
Georges Salle (1945-1957)
André Parro
(1968-1972)
Jean-Luc Martinez (since April 2013)
Laurence de Cars
(since September 2021).
The museum is open to visitors every day except Tuesdays. Entrance is paid (in 2019 - 17 euros when buying online, 15 euros on the spot at the box office), a number of categories of visitors (including people under 18 and people with disabilities) are free. Photography without flash is allowed in the permanent exhibition halls.
The Man Who Saved the Louvre = Illustre et Inconnu: Comment Jacques
Jaujaurd a sauvé le Louvre. Documentary. Directed by Jean-Pierre
Devillers et Pierre Pochart. Production: Ladybirds Films, Le Musée du
Louvre, Doriane Films. 2014 Russia-Culture. 12/10/2017. About the rescue
of the Louvre collections by the director of the National Museums of
France, Jacques Jaujard, from looting during the Nazi occupation of
France.
2016 - History of the Louvre / Les batailles du Louvre (dir.
Sylvain Bergère / Sylvain Bergère)