Louvre

King Philip II began the construction of the Louvre Palace in the late 12th century to defend the city against the Kingdom of England, which still held Normandy. The Medieval Louvre's remnants can still be seen in the crypt, though it is unclear whether this was the first building on the site.

The origin of the name "Louvre" is disputed. According to the encyclopedia of Grande Larousse, it comes from a wolf hunting den, but it may also have been named after a villa called Luvra gifted to a monastery in the 7th century.

The Louvre Palace has undergone numerous renovations since its construction. Charles V converted it from a military building to a residence, while Francis I rebuilt it in the French Renaissance style. After Louis XIV moved to Versailles, the Louvre was used as a residence for artists under Royal patronage.

The Louvre's collections were acquired by the monarchs of the House of France. Francis collected art at Fontainebleau that would later be part of the Louvre's collection, including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

By the middle of the 18th century, there were increasing calls for a public gallery in the Louvre. Under Louis XVI, the idea of a royal museum in the Louvre came closer to fruition, and many design proposals were offered for its renovation into a museum. However, the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution.

The Louvre became a public museum during the French Revolution after the National Constituent Assembly declared in May 1791 that it would be a place to showcase art and science. In August 1792, the royal collection in the Louvre became national property after Louis XVI was imprisoned. To prevent vandalism or theft, the museum's preparation was declared urgent, and a committee was formed in October to assemble the collection for display.

The museum officially opened on August 10, 1793 as Muséum central des arts de la République. The public had free access three days a week, which was a major accomplishment at the time. The collection displayed 537 paintings and 184 objects of art.

To establish the Louvre as a museum and a "sign of popular sovereignty" France's revolutionary armies brought in pieces from Northern Europe, and works from the Vatican were added after the Treaty of Tolentino (1797), such as the Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere.

During the early days of the museum, privileged artists continued to live in residence, and the paintings were hung "frame to frame from floor to ceiling" without labels. The structure itself closed temporarily in May 1796 due to structural deficiencies, but it reopened on July 14, 1801, arranged chronologically with new lighting and columns. In August 1797, the Galerie d'Apollon opened with an exhibition of drawings, and the Louvre's gallery of Antiquity sculpture, with artefacts from Florence and the Vatican, opened in November 1800 in Anne of Austria's former summer apartment on the ground floor, just below the Galerie d'Apollon.

In 1802, during Napoleon's rule, the museum was renamed the Napoleon Museum, and its collection was expanded as a result of successful military campaigns, including military plunder and official acquisitions.Italian cities were compelled to contribute pieces of art and heritage to Napoleon's "parades of spoils" through Paris. The looting of Italian churches and palaces outraged the Italians, and after the French defeat at Waterloo, the former owners sought the return of their looted works. Some works were returned, but not all. In 1815, agreements were finally made with the Austrian government for the keeping of certain works.

During the Bourbon Restoration, Louis XVIII and Charles X added to the Louvre's collections. The Greek and Roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor of the southwestern side of the Cour Carrée was completed, along with an exhibition of manufactured products on the first floor of the southern wing. Charles X created the Musée Égyptien, which formed the basis for the Louvre's Department of Egyptian Antiquities. The Galerie d'Angoulême, a section of French sculptures, was also opened in 1824. The French Navy exhibited ship models in the Louvre in December 1827, which developed into the Musée national de la Marine.

In 1850, the Musée Mexicain was opened within the Louvre as the first European museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art under the leadership of curator Adrien de Longpérier.

During the reign of Napoleon III, the Louvre underwent significant changes both as a building and a museum. In 1852, he established the Musée des Souverains in the Colonnade Wing as part of an ideological project to strengthen his personal legitimacy. Later in 1861, he acquired the Campana collection, which included 11,835 artworks such as Greek gold, antiquities, and 641 paintings. To house these new acquisitions, he created a new section within the Louvre called the Musée Napoléon III, which occupied several rooms in different parts of the building. Over the course of his reign, the museum's collection grew by 20,000 new artifacts.

The main transformation during this period affected the very building itself. In the 1850s, architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel constructed vast new spaces around what is now known as the Napoleon Courtyard. In the 1860s, the Sessions Pavilion with a new State Hall was created. Another important project of the Second Empire era was the decoration of the Hall of Emperors beneath the Carré Salon.

In 1871, near the museum, the Tuileries Palace was set on fire, resulting in a 48-hour blaze that reached some of the museum's halls. Despite the danger, through the efforts of Parisian firefighters and museum staff, the museum was successfully saved from the fire.

During the Third Republic, the Louvre expanded its collections through donations, gifts, and sharing arrangements on excavations abroad. This expansion brought new artifacts to the museum, including the 583-item Collection La Caze, which was donated in 1869. The collection included works by Chardin, Fragonard, Rembrandt, and Watteau. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, found in the Aegean Sea in 1863, was prominently displayed in 1883. Additionally, major artifacts excavated in Iran, including the massive Apadana capital and glazed brick decoration from the Palace of Darius, were also added to the Oriental Antiquities Department in the 1880s.

The Société des amis du Louvre was established in 1897 and donated prominent works, such as the Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. However, the museum's collections shifted away from its mid-century ambition of universality to become more focused on French, Western, and Near Eastern art from the late 19th century. The Louvre's first gallery of Islamic art opened in 1922.

World War II posed a new threat to the museum, and the Louvre conducted an elaborate plan to evacuate its art collection to various castles. After the war, the art was returned to the museum, and the Louvre expanded and redesigned its exhibitions in the late 1920s and 1930s.

In 1981, the President of France, François Mitterrand, proposed the Grand Louvre Plan. The plan aimed to relocate the Ministry of Finance, which was situated in the northern wing of the Louvre, and dedicate almost the entire building to the museum. In 1984, architect I. M. Pei proposed a plan that included an underground entrance space through a glass pyramid located in the central courtyard of the Louvre.

The open spaces surrounding the pyramid were inaugurated on October 15th, 1988, and its underground lobby was opened on March 30th, 1989. New galleries of early modern French paintings were opened in 1989, and further rooms designed by Italo Rota were opened on December 15th, 1992.

On November 18th, 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated the renovated North (Richelieu) Wing, which was the museum's largest single expansion in its entire history. The Carrousel du Louvre, which was located underground and centered on the Inverted Pyramid, was designed by Pei and Macary and had opened in October 1993. Other galleries of Italian sculptures and Egyptian antiquities were refurbished and opened in 1994. The third and final phase of the plan unfolded mainly in 1997, with new renovated rooms in the Sully and Denon wings. A new entrance at the porte des Lions opened in 1998, leading to new rooms of Spanish paintings on the first floor.

By 2002, the Louvre's visitor count had doubled from its pre-Grand-Louvre levels.

In 1995, Jacques Chirac became the President of France and sought to return non-Western art to the Louvre. As a result, a selection of non-Western art was exhibited on the ground floor of the Pavillon des Sessions in 2000.

Chirac also established a new department of Islamic art in the Denon Wing.The new section opened in 2012 and was supported financially by the Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation. In 2007, Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work for the North stairs of the Perrault Colonnade, Athanor, marking the museum's reengagement with contemporary art under the direction of Henri Loyrette.

The Louvre also commissioned Cy Twombly to create a new ceiling for the Hall of Bronzes in 2010, and in the same year, François Morellet was commissioned to create a work for the Lefuel stairs. In 2014, the Decorative Arts section on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's northern wing reopened after comprehensive refurbishment. In 2020, under the direction of Jean-Luc Martinez, the museum inaugurated a new contemporary art commission, L'Onde du Midi by Venezuelan kinetic artist Elias Crespin.

Like many other museums and galleries, the Louvre was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was closed for six months during the French coronavirus lockdowns. The number of visitors to the museum drastically decreased in 2020, with only 2.7 million visitors compared to the record of 10.2 million visitors in 2018.

The department has over 50,000 artifacts from Nile civilizations dating back to 4,000 BC to the 4th century AD, making it one of the world's largest collections. It covers Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods. It began with the royal collection and was expanded by Napoleon's expedition and later by purchases and excavations by Champollion and Mariette. The collection includes art, papyrus scrolls, mummies, tools, clothing, jewelry, games, musical instruments, and weapons. Some notable pieces are the Seated Scribe, the Head of King Djedefre, and the statue of the goddess Nephthys.

The Near Eastern antiquities department, established in 1881, showcases early Near Eastern civilization before Islam. It is divided into three areas: the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Persia. The collection includes artifacts from Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Stele of the Vultures. The Levant section has a large collection of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, while the Persian section includes work from the archaic period and rare objects from Persepolis.

The Greek, Etruscan, and Roman department showcases Mediterranean artifacts from the Neolithic to the 6th century. The collection includes pieces from the Cycladic period to the decline of the Roman Empire, with a focus on marble sculptures such as the Venus de Milo. The Louvre's oldest department began with royal art and has since acquired works like vases from the Durand collection and bronzes such as the Borghese Vase. Notable pieces include The Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Borghese Gladiator, and the Venus de Milo. The Galerie Campana features over a thousand Greek potteries, while Roman sculpture is displayed in galleries parallel to the Seine.

The museum's latest addition is the Islamic art collection, which covers a span of "thirteen centuries and three continents”. This collection includes over 5,000 pieces and 1,000 shards of ceramics, glass, metalware, wood, ivory, carpets, textiles, and miniatures. Originally part of the decorative arts department, it became a separate collection in 2003. Notable works in the collection include the Pyxide d'al-Mughira, a 10th-century ivory box from Andalusia, the Baptistery of Saint-Louis, an engraved brass basin from the 13th or 14th century Mamluk period, and the Shroud of Saint-Josse from Iran, dating back to the 10th century. Additionally, the collection features three pages of the Persian epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi and the Barberini Vase, a metalwork from Syria.

In September 2019, a new and improved Islamic art department was opened by Princess Lamia bint Majed Al Saud, featuring 3,000 pieces from Spain to India via the Arabian peninsula dating back to the 7th to the 19th centuries.

The Louvre's sculpture department displays works created before 1850, excluding those from the Etruscan, Greek, and Roman departments. The collection began with only 100 pieces, mainly ancient architecture, until Léon Laborde expanded it in 1847 by acquiring medieval sculptures. The department gained autonomy in 1871 and was split into two exhibition spaces for French and foreign works in 1986. The French collection includes Romanesque, Renaissance, Neoclassical, and 18th and 19th-century works by sculptors such as Jean Goujon, Germain Pilon, Antonio Canova, and Alfred Barye.

The Objets d'art collection at the Louvre spans the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century. It began as a subset of the sculpture department with royal property and works from the Basilique Saint-Denis. The collection grew with acquisitions and donations, including ceramics, enamels, stained glass, jewelry, and tapestries. The works are displayed on the first floor of the Richelieu Wing and the Apollo Gallery. Highlights include the coronation crown of Louis XIV, Renaissance art, Madame de Pompadour's Sèvres vase collection, and Napoleon III's apartments. The Chagoury Gallery displays donated tapestries, including a 16th-century suite commissioned for Colbert de Seignelay.

The Louvre has over 7,500 paintings from the 13th century to 1848, managed by 12 curators. Two-thirds are by French artists, 1,200 are Northern European, and many Italian works were acquired by Francis I and Louis XIV. The collection split when Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986. The French School is exemplified by Quarton's Avignon Pietà, Rigaud's Louis XIV, and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. Northern European works include Vermeer's The Lacemaker and Rembrandt's The Supper at Emmaus. Italian works include Mantegna and Bellini's Calvarys, and da Vinci's Mona Lisa. La Caze Collection, the largest donation in Louvre's history, included Watteau's Commedia dell'arte player of Pierrot. Some of the most famous paintings have been digitized.

The prints and drawings department consists of paper works that originated from the Royal Collection and have since increased in size through state appropriation, purchases, and donations. The department opened in 1797 with 415 pieces and is divided into three sections: the core Cabinet du Roi, 14,000 royal copper printing-plates, and the donations of Edmond de Rothschild. The collection is housed in the Pavillon de Flore, and due to the paper's fragility, only a portion is displayed at a time.

The Louvre is a French government-owned museum whose management and governance have been made more independent since the 1990s. The museum has been required to generate funds for projects since 2003.

The French government funds operating costs while the rest, including new wings, refurbishments, and acquisitions, is up to the museum to finance. The Louvre raises approximately €122 million annually and raises a further €3 million to €5 million each year from exhibitions that it curates for other museums. Private contributions and ticket sales make up the remainder of the Louvre's budget.

The Louvre employs a staff of 2,000 led by Director Jean-Luc Martinez who reports to the French Ministry of Culture and Communications. Under the previous director, Henri Loyrette, the Louvre underwent policy changes that allowed it to lend and rent out more artworks than before.

The Louvre and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announced a five-year collaboration on exhibitions, publications, art conservation and educational programming in 2012. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is supposed to provide €400 million over the course of 30 years for its use of the museum's brand.

In March 2018, an exhibition of dozens of artworks and relics belonging to France's Louvre Museum was opened to visitors in Tehran, following an agreement between Iranian and French presidents in 2016. On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit of his work, which included over a hundred items such as paintings, drawings, and notebooks.