Louvre first a castle before to be a museum
The Louvre museum was first a medieval fortified castle (12th century) that became the residence of the kings of France, then a royal art gallery, a storing building for part of the royal collections of antique paintings and sculptures, and finally one of the largest museums in the world, protected and enriched at all times by all political regimes.
If you are interested in the history of the Palais du Louvre, which for 800 years was at the heart of the History of France, enlarged and modified by some fifteen kings or regimes, click here on The construction of the Palais du Louvre over time.
The beginning of the museum in the Louvre Palace in the midst of revolutionary turmoil
The Musée du Louvre as we know it today, starts in 1793, in the middle of the French Révolution. It underwent its final transformations during the Second Empire (1851-1870) when the galleries on either side of the Cour Napoléon (where the Pyramid is today located) were completed. But by the time the original plan to link the Louvre Palace to the Tuileries Palace nearby was totally completed, the Tuileries castle was burnt down by the "Commune riot" in 1871. The Tuileries ruins were destroyed in the following years and never re-built. In the place is now the Jardin des Tuileries.
In 1981, the Richelieu wing (north, on the Rue de Rivoli side), still occupied by the Ministry of Finance at the time, became part of the museum. The ministry was transferred to its present location on the Quai de Bercy. The museum's square footage increased from 30,000 m² to 55,000 m². The Chinese-American architect Leoh Ming Pei, who was in charge of the project, proposed to build a pyramidal central entrance in the Cour Napoléon.
In 2018, with approximately 10.2 million annual visitors, the Louvre was the most visited museum in the world.
The Louvre: a Universalist Museum
The Louvre covers an extensive chronology and geographical area, from Antiquity to 1848(1), and from Western Europe to Iran, via Greece, Egypt, and the Near East. It comprises eight departments, which, including deposits in other museums (28,530 works), comprise 554,731 works at the end of 2016.
(1): the Musée d'Orsay just opposite the Louvre museum, on the other bank of the Seine river.
Orsay museum collections present Western art from 1848 to 1914, in the continuity of The Louvre museum and in all its diversity: painting, sculpture, decorative arts, graphic art, photography, architecture, etc... It is one of the largest museums in Europe for this period.
The museum also has the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world, with almost 1,100 paintings in total out of more than 3,650, and masterpieces of painting and sculpture can be seen.
Collections of the Louvre Museum - to plan your visit
The first collections presented today at the Louvre Museum come directly or indirectly from the kings of France, accumulated over several centuries. The first king to collect works was Charles V (1338 - 1380). All other kings do the same. Later, the French Revolution of 1789, and then the various regimes of the 19th and 20th centuries that succeeded one another at the head of France. The works were bought, given, exchanged, recovered during wars or excavations. The Louvre Museum is now one of the most extensive museums in the world. Hence the need to order the presentation of the works in 8 collections:
- Oriental Antiques - Antiquités orientales - 137 628 works
- Egyptian Antiquities - Antiquités égyptiennes - 66 300 works
- Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines - 68 362 works
- Arts of Islam - Arts de l'Islam - 15 311 works
- Sculptures - Sculptures - 6 115 works
- Works of art - Objets d'art - 23 405 works
- Paintings - Peintures - 12 660 works
- Graphic Arts - 122 212 works
In addition to the eight departments, the Louvre museum includes the "Rothschild Collection" (86,858 works) and the "Chalcography" section (14,647 works).
The number of objects on display at a time is 35,000. The museum's works are varied in nature: paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, archaeological objects, art objects of various materials, among others.
Among the most famous pieces of the museum is the Code of Hammurabi, the Venus de Milo, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Guiding the People or the Victory of Samothrace, etc.
It is quite impossible to see everything in the Louvre museum. For example, visiting 100 works a day would take a full year to see all 35,000 exhibits. It would take 15 times that amount of time to see the 550,000 stored objects that belong to the Louvre.
Organization of the exhibition rooms
The museum is huge and it is easy to get lost or to waste a lot of time finding what you want to see.
It is spread over five levels in the Richelieu wing (to the north along the rue de Rivoli), the Sully wing (to the east around the Cour carrée), and the Denon wing (to the south along the Seine river). (For the distribution of the collections in the rooms between the various departments, see "Plan of the Louvre" [archive] [PDF], on louvre.fr)
The entrance is under the Louvre pyramid on level -2, which gives access to a temporary exhibition hall, an auditorium, and several rooms on level -1 in the Richelieu and Denon wings, as well as the medieval Louvre under the Cour carrée.
Most of the collections are on display on the ground and first floors of the Richelieu, Sully, and Denon wings, and on the second floor of the Richelieu and Sully wings. The museum thus occupies a large part of the Louvre Palace. However, the western ends of the palace are devoted to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the extension of the Richelieu wing, and to the École du Louvre and the reserves in the extension of the Denon wing.
Map of the Louvre, a useful accessory
In 2017-2018, all of the museum's rooms were renumbered by removing duplicates, whereas the previous numbering depended on the collections. Now each room has a unique number that identifies the wing and floor. The locations of these rooms inside the Louvre Palace is available at "Plan du Louvre"
|
Level |
Richelieu wing |
Sully wing |
Denon wing |
| Rooms 1 à 99 |
Level -2 |
| Rooms 100 à 199 |
Level -1 |
Rooms 100 à 129 |
Rooms 130 à 159 |
Rooms 160 à 199 |
| Rooms 200 à 499 |
Ground level |
Rooms 200 à 299 |
Rooms 300 à 399 |
Rooms 400 à 499 |
| Rooms 500 à 799 |
1st floor |
Rooms 500 à 599 |
Rooms 600 à 699 |
Rooms 700 à 799 |
| Rooms 800 à 999 |
2nd floor |
Rooms 800 à 899 |
Rooms 900 à 999 |
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