Louvre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Louvre received 9 million visitors in 2025, more than any other art museum on Earth. On the 19th of October 2025, a handful of people changed all that for a single morning. They arrived at the Galerie d'Apollon, raised a platform mounted on a lorry, and cut through a window with what looked like angle grinders. In a few minutes they took nine major pieces of jewellery from the crowns of France. They fled by motorbike. The museum closed for the day. This is a building that began as a fortress against an English-held Normandy, became the home of French kings, and turned into the largest museum in the world. How does a 12th-century stronghold end up guarding the Mona Lisa? Why does one painting draw 20,000 visitors a day? And what does it take to run a place holding more than 615,000 objects?

• 2. From Fortress To Palace

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  King Philip II began the Louvre in the late 12th century to defend Paris from attack from the west, since the Kingdom of England still held Normandy. Remnants of that medieval fortress remain visible in the museum's basement crypt. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building from a military role into a residence. The origins of the name itself are disputed. The authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique ties it to a wolf hunting den, by way of the Latin lupus. A competing account derives it from the French verb louer, meaning to let or rent, since louvagium in medieval France was a fee paid for the use of something. In 1546, Francis I started rebuilding the structure in French Renaissance style, and as urban expansion stripped the fortress of its defensive purpose, it became the primary residence of the French kings. The redesigns piled up over centuries to form the present Louvre Palace. Everything shifted in 1682, when Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household. The royal move away from Paris left the Louvre to artists living under royal patronage. Four generations of craftsmen from the Boulle family resided there on that basis.

• 3. The King's Paintings

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  Francis I gathered art at the Palace of Fontainebleau that would one day anchor the Louvre, including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The Cabinet du Roi, seven rooms on the upper floor of the remodelled Petite Galerie, became an art gallery in 1673, open to certain art lovers as a kind of museum. When the court moved to Versailles in 1681, twenty-six of the paintings followed, thinning the display. By the mid-18th century, calls for a true public gallery were growing. Art critic Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne published a plea for the royal collection to be shown in 1747. On the 14th of October 1750, Louis XV agreed to display ninety-six pieces from the royal collection in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. Open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that gallery held an Andrea del Sarto and works by Raphael, Titian, Veronese, Rembrandt, Poussin, and Van Dyck. It closed in 1780 after the king gave the Luxembourg palace to the Count of Provence. Under Louis XVI, the comte d'Angiviller proposed in 1776 to convert the Grande Galerie, then full of 3D models of fortified sites, into a French Museum. No final decision came, and the museum stayed incomplete until revolution forced the question.

• 4. A Museum For The Nation

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  In May 1791, the National Constituent Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts. On the 10th of August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection became national property. Fearing vandalism or theft, the assembly pronounced the museum's preparation urgent within days. The doors opened on the 10th of August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise, under the name Museum central des Arts de la Republique. The public received free access three days a week, an arrangement widely appreciated. The first display held 537 paintings and 184 objects of art. Three-quarters came from the royal collections, the rest from confiscated emigres and Church property. To run it, the Republic set aside 100,000 livres a year. The early days were chaotic. Privileged artists still lived in residence, and unlabelled paintings hung frame to frame from floor to ceiling. Structural deficiencies forced the museum to close in May 1796. It reopened on the 14th of July 1801, this time arranged chronologically with new lighting and columns. One painting carries a personal story. Bertrand Clauzel, serving in the Army of Italy, returned with the Woman with Dropsy by the Dutch master Gerard Dou and donated it, the first donation in the museum's history.

• 5. Spoils Of Empire

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  On the 19th of November 1802, Napoleon appointed Vivant Denon as the museum's first director, a scholar who had joined the Egyptian campaign of 1798 to 1801. He was chosen over rivals including the painter Jacques-Louis David and the sculptor Antonio Canova. On Denon's suggestion, the museum was renamed Musee Napoleon in July 1803. Military campaigns fed the collection. Treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797 compelled Italian cities to surrender art for parades of spoils through Paris. The Horses of Saint Mark, which had adorned San Marco in Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, were placed atop Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in 1797. The statues of the Nile and Tiber were taken from the Vatican that same year. After the French defeat at Waterloo, the former owners came for their property. Denon was loath to comply without a treaty of restitution. Foreign states sent emissaries to London, and many pieces went home, though far from all. The Nile returned to Rome, while the Tiber remains in the Louvre to this day. In 1815, Louis XVIII reached agreements with the Austrian government, including the exchange of Veronese's Wedding at Cana for a large Le Brun.

• 6. The Pyramid And Its Maker

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  In 1981, French President Francois Mitterrand proposed the Grand Louvre plan as one of his Grands Projets. The idea was to move the Finance Ministry out of the North Wing and give nearly the entire building to the museum. In 1984, I. M. Pei, the architect Mitterrand chose personally, proposed an underground entrance reached through a glass pyramid in the central Cour Napoleon. 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. Since 1993, that space beneath the pyramid, the Hall Napoleon, has served as the museum's main entrance. On the 18th of November 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated the renovated North Wing in the former Finance Ministry, the largest single expansion in the museum's entire history. Underground spaces known as the Carrousel du Louvre, centred on the Inverted Pyramid, had opened that October. By 2002, the Louvre's visitor count had doubled from its pre-Grand-Louvre levels. President Jacques Chirac, who succeeded Mitterrand in 1995, pushed for a return of non-Western art. By his executive order of the 1st of August 2003, a new department of Islamic Art was created, opening on the 22nd of September 2012 with support from the Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation.

• 7. Eight Departments Under One Roof

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  The Musee du Louvre owns 615,797 objects, of which 482,943 have been accessible online since the 24th of March 2021, and it displays 35,000 works across eight curatorial departments. The Egyptian Antiquities department holds over 50,000 pieces spanning from 4,000 BC to the 4th century AD, guarded by the Great Sphinx of Tanis. Its origins trace to Napoleon's 1798 expedition, and after Jean-Francois Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone, Charles X decreed the department's creation. The Near Eastern department, dating from 1881, holds the 2.25 metre Code of Hammurabi, discovered in 1901, which displayed Babylonian laws so no man could plead ignorance. The Greek, Etruscan, and Roman department contains works acquired by Francis I, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace from 190 BC, found in the Aegean Sea in 1863. The painting collection runs past 7,500 works from the 13th century to 1848, nearly two-thirds by French artists. The largest single gift came in 1869, when Louis La Caze bequeathed 584 paintings, including Antoine Watteau's Pierrot, known as Gilles. The newest addition is the Gallery of the Five Continents, which opened on the 3rd of December 2025 with 130 works from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

• 8. Money, Crisis, And Crowns

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  By 2006, government funding had fallen from 75 percent of the Louvre's budget to 62 percent, and the museum now raises about as much as the state gives it, roughly 122 million euros a year. The state covers operating costs while the museum finances new wings, refurbishments, and acquisitions. The Da Vinci Code and its 2006 film earned the Louvre 2.5 million dollars in filming fees. Crisis has tested the institution repeatedly. The COVID-19 pandemic shut the doors after the 29th of February 2020, and the museum recorded only 2.7 million visitors that year, down from a record 10.2 million in 2018. On the 16th of June 2025, employees went on strike over overcrowding, understaffing, and what they called untenable working conditions. Then came the October heist. Eight pieces were stolen, including an emerald necklace that belonged to Empress Marie-Louise. The ninth, the Crown of Empress Eugenie, was recovered the same day in a damaged condition. Its restoration, estimated at 40,000 euros, is supervised by a committee including representatives from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. The fallout reached the top. On the 24th of February 2026, director Laurence des Cars handed her resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, and Christophe Leribault was appointed president the next day. Macron's planned renovation includes a dedicated 3,000 square metre suite for the Mona Lisa, with its own access route to handle the painting's 20,000 daily visitors.