Musée du Louvre
Métro Palais Royal; Louvre Open: 9:00 am - 9:30 pm everyday except tuesday |
In
1200 Philippe Auguste, still living on the Ile de la
Cité, built a fortress and a keep along the Seine to
protect Paris. It was located northwest of what is now
the Cour Carrée, and parts of it still remain in the
museum's archaeological crypt. Charles V made the Louvre
his royal home in 1358, but he kept its defensive
properties intact. His successors lived elsewhere, mainly
in the Hôtel St-Paul and the Hôtel des Tournelles. François I tore down the building and left it to Pierre Lescot to transform the Louvre into a Renaissance Palace. Work was far from finished upon the king's death in 1547. The West and South wings were built under Henri II. After his death, Catherine de Medicis took up residence in the Louvre. She decided to connect it to the Tuileries palace, where she wanted to build Italian-style gardens. It wasn't until Henri IV's death that construction was truly begun on the Grande Galerie and the Petite Galerie. In 1659, Louis XIII commissioned Lemercier to work on the Clock Pavilion; he enlarged it with a series of buildings., Louis XIV decided to make the Louvre even larger and hired Le Vau and Le Notre to expand the Cour Carrée and the Tuileries, respectively. Despite all this work, Louis XIV lived in his palace at Versailles. After the Revolution, Napoleon I enlarged the Place du Carrousel, where he built an Arc de Triomphe. He also decided to build a wing along the Rue de Rivoli, but work was stopped after his fall. Napoleon III continued and finished construction on the Louvre, with the help of Visconti. During the events of the Paris Commune in 1871 the Tuileries were burnt down. In 1882, Lefuel was hired to rebuild the Marsan and Flore pavilions. Today, its numerous art collections have made the Louvre the biggest museum in the world; the addition of I.M. Pei's stunning glass pyramid in 1988 perfectly symbolizes the Louvre's movement with time. |
