Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Louvre received 9 million visitors in 2025 and is regularly ranked as the most-visited art museum in the world. Its record was 10.2 million visitors in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic, which dropped attendance to 2.7 million in 2020.
The Louvre was begun by King Philip II in the late 12th century as a fortress to protect Paris from attack from the west, because the Kingdom of England still held Normandy at the time. Remnants of that medieval fortress remain visible in the museum's basement crypt.
The Louvre opened as a public museum on the 10th of August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise, during the French Revolution. Its first display held 537 paintings and 184 objects of art, three-quarters of which came from the royal collections.
On the 19th of October 2025, thieves took nine major pieces of jewellery from the crowns of France from the Galerie d'Apollon. Eight pieces were stolen, including an emerald necklace that belonged to Empress Marie-Louise, while the ninth, the Crown of Empress Eugenie, was recovered the same day in a damaged condition.
The glass pyramid at the Louvre was designed by architect I. M. Pei, personally selected by President Francois Mitterrand in 1984 as part of the Grand Louvre plan. The open spaces around the pyramid were inaugurated on the 15th of October 1988, and the underground lobby opened on the 30th of March 1989.
The Musee du Louvre owns 615,797 objects and displays 35,000 works of art across eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities, Near Eastern Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities, Islamic Art, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, Paintings, and Prints and Drawings. Of its objects, 482,943 have been accessible online since the 24th of March 2021.