179-677: The Grande Galerie ( French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃d ɡalʁi] ), in the past also known as the Galerie du Bord de l'Eau (Waterside Gallery), is a wing of the Louvre Palace , perhaps more properly referred to as the Aile de la Grande Galerie (Grand Gallery Wing), since it houses the longest and largest room of the museum, also referred to as the Grande Galerie, one of the museum's most iconic spaces. This unusually long wing
358-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process
537-629: A building to connect the Tuileries with the older Louvre building. Henry IV , France's new king from 1589 (the first from the House of Bourbon ) and master of Paris from 1594, is associated with the further articulation of what became known as the Grand Dessein ("Grand Design") of uniting the Louvre and the Tuileries in a single building, together with the extension of the eastern courtyard to
716-441: A committee comprising Le Vau, Charles Le Brun and Claude Perrault produced a symmetrical and classical design featuring a giant Corinthian order colonnade with paired columns and a balustrade running along the flat line of the roof. Works started in 1667 and the exterior structures were largely completed by 1674, but would not be fully decorated and roofed until the early 19th century under Napoleon . The definitive design of
895-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,
1074-603: A defensive castle , it has served several government-related functions in the past, including intermittently as a royal residence between the 14th and 18th centuries. It is now mostly used by the Louvre Museum , which first opened there in 1793. While this area along the Seine had been inhabited for thousands of years, the Louvre's history starts around 1190 with its first construction as the Louvre Castle defending
1253-662: A few more years. Marigny had ambitious plans for the completion of the Cour Carrée, but their execution was cut short in the late 1750s by the adverse developments of the Seven Years' War . Jacques-Germain Soufflot in 1759 led the demolition of the upper structures of Le Vau's dome above the Pavillon des Arts, whose chimneys were in poor condition, and designed the northern and eastern passageways ( guichets ) of
1432-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and
1611-684: A glossy quarterly magazine published by the Louvre. Louvre Palace The Louvre Palace (French: Palais du Louvre , [palɛ dy luvʁ] ), often referred to simply as the Louvre , is an iconic French palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris , occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois . Originally
1790-588: A greater level of ambition for the Louvre was again signaled. On 24 March 1848, the provisional government published an order that renamed the Louvre as the Palais du Peuple ("People's Palace") and heralded the project to complete it and dedicate it to the exhibition of art and industry as well as the National Library. In a February 1849 speech at the National Assembly , Victor Hugo described
1969-675: A monumental entrance initially called porte de la Bibliothèque , later renamed porte Barbet de Jouy . In the 1860s, the Louvre's architect Hector-Martin Lefuel remodeled the southwestern wing of the Louvre Palace and created a new venue for state ceremonies, the Salle des Sessions , close to the Tuileries Palace where Emperor Napoleon III had his Paris residence. Lefuel cut the Grande Galerie short, reducing it by about
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#17327733376112148-551: A new Pavillon des Sessions for state functions, and the monumental Guichets du Carrousel replacing those created in 1760 near the Pavillon Lesdiguières . French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from
2327-590: A new building campaign during which the Pavillon de l'Horloge was completed. Its second staircase, mirroring Lescot's Grand Degré to the north, was still unfinished when the Fronde again interrupted the works in the 1640s, and its decoration has never been completed since then. At that time, much of the construction (though not the decoration) of the new wing had been completed, but the northern pavilion, or Pavillon de Beauvais , designed by Lemercier similarly as Lescot's Pavillon du Roi , had barely been started. On
2506-595: A new suite of rooms flanking it to the west (the Grand Cabinet du Roi , later Escalier Percier et Fontaine ) with a new façade on what became known as the Cour de la Reine (later Cour de l'Infante , Cour du Musée , and now Cour du Sphinx ), and expanded the former Grand Salon on the northern side as well as making it double-height, creating the Salon Carré in its current dimensions. From 1668 to 1678
2685-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
2864-504: A peripheral location: the Lescot Wing, in particular, was built as the Louvre's main corps de logis . Given the Louvre wings' length and the fact that they typically abutted parts of the city with streets and private buildings, several of them have passageways on the ground floor which in the Louvre's specific context are called guichets . The origin of the name Louvre is unclear. French historian Henri Sauval , probably writing in
3043-657: A protruding structure on the northern side, the Porte des Lions , a passageway to the quay, the Porte Jaujard on the north side, now the main entrance to the École du Louvre , and finally the Pavillon de Flore . Similarly, on the northern side of the Cour Napoléon are, from east to west, the pavilions named after Jean-Baptiste Colbert , Cardinal Richelieu , and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot . Between these and
3222-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in
3401-499: A replica of Métézeau's façade pattern further east. Lefuel also created the current skylight system at the center of the gallery's ceiling. The new ceilings of the gallery below the Pavillon Lesdiguières and Lefuel's new Pavillon La Trémoille were adorned with paintings by Alexandre-Dominique Denuelle and stucco sculptures by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse . The interior design was again streamlined around 1950 by Louvre architect Jean-Jacques Haffner [ fr ] . in
3580-683: A result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including the United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ,
3759-505: A third of its original length, to make space for the new room. Since that room was broader than the gallery, it resulted in a protruding structure on the northern side, the Pavillon des Sessions . The building was entirely demolished west of the Pavillon Lesdiguières , as was the Pavillon de Flore at its western end, and rebuilt to the new plan and new exterior designs that replaced the previous giant order , which Lefuel disliked, with
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#17327733376113938-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in
4117-404: A wheat warehouse and deteriorated. On 21 October 1652, the king and the court ceremonially re-entered the Louvre and made it their residence again, initiating a new burst of construction that would last to the late 1670s. Meanwhile Anne of Austria , like Marie de' Medici as queen mother before her, inhabited the ground-floor apartment in the Cour Carrée's southern wing. She extended it to
4296-457: A working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As
4475-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French
4654-481: Is a building that has gone through a lot"). In the early 1920s Henri Verne , who would soon become the Louvre's Director, noted that "it has become, through the very slow pace of its development, the most representative monument of our national life." In 1190 King Philip II of France , who was about to leave for the Third Crusade , ordered the construction of a defensive wall all around Paris . To protect
4833-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English
5012-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given
5191-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in
5370-563: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English
5549-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from
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5728-437: Is more plausible. David Hanser suggests instead that the word may come from French louveterie , a "place where dogs were trained to chase wolves". Beyond the name of the palace itself, the toponymy of the Louvre can be treacherous. Partly because of the building's long history and links to changing politics, different names have applied at different times to the same structures or rooms. For example, what used to be known in
5907-469: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in
6086-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for
6265-653: Is similarly known as the Lemercier Wing ( Aile Lemercier ). The eastern wing is the Aile de la Colonnade , named after its iconic eastern façade, the Louvre Colonnade . On the southern side of the Cour Napoléon , the Denon Wing's three main pavilions are named respectively, from east to west, after Napoleon -era officials Pierre Daru , Vivant Denon and Nicolas François Mollien . Between these and
6444-672: Is situated on the right bank of the Seine , between the Quai François Mitterrand to its south, the Avenue du Général-Lemonnier to its west (thus named since 1957; formerly rue des Tuileries and Avenue Paul-Déroulède , converted into an underpass in 1987–1989 ), the Rue de Rivoli to its north, and the Place du Louvre to its east. The complex occupies about 40 hectares with buildings distributed around two main open spaces:
6623-639: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,
6802-597: Is the continuity of the French state." For example, from the 1620s to the 1650s Jacques Lemercier thoroughly replicated the Lescot Wing 's patterns for his design of the northern half of the western wing of the Cour Carrée . In the 1660s Louis Le Vau echoed Lemercier's Pavillon de l'Horloge for his redesign of the central pavillon of the Tuileries Palace further west (burnt in 1871 and demolished in 1883), and mostly continued Lescot's and Lemercier's pattern for
6981-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure
7160-483: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in
7339-411: Is the result of many phases of building, modification, destruction and reconstruction. Its apparent stylistic consistency is largely due to conscious efforts of architects over several centuries to echo each other's work and preserve a strong sense of historical continuity, mirroring that of the French monarchy and state; American essayist Adam Gopnik has written that "The continuity the Louvre represents
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7518-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially
7697-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism
7876-415: Is traditionally attributed to Louis Métezeau . The ground and intermediate ( entresol ) floors of the eastern half were soon devoted to artists' dwellings and workshops, by royal authorization in 1608. The design of the western half is attributed to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau , who decorated it with a giant order of coupled pilasters framing two floors of windows. The original design called for
8055-497: The Salle Haute , Grande Salle , Salle des Gardes , Salle d'Attente , in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was fragmented into apartments during the 18th century, then recreated in the early 19th and called successively Salle Royale , Salle des Séances Royales or Salle des Etats (the latter also being the name of two other ceremonial rooms, created in the 1850s and 1860s respectively); then as part of
8234-764: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of
8413-640: The Appartement d'été d'Anne d'Autriche . In 1659, Louis XIV instigated a new phase of construction under Le Vau and painter Charles Le Brun . Le Vau oversaw the remodeling and completion of the Tuileries Palace, and at the Louvre, the completion of the walls of the north wing and of the eastern half of the south wing. By 1660 the Pavillon de Beauvais and the western half of the northern wing had been completed; in October of that year, most of
8592-497: The Carbone Smolan Agency to refer to the three clusters of buildings that surround that central focus point: The Louvre Museum occupies most of the palace's space, but not all of it. The main other users are at the building's two western tips: in the southwestern Aile de Flore , the École du Louvre and Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF); and in the northwestern Aile de Marsan ,
8771-609: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of
8950-517: The Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only a second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and
9129-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains
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#17327733376119308-441: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,
9487-436: The Grande Galerie . Percier and Fontaine were retained by Louis XVIII at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration , and kept working on the decoration projects they had started under Napoleon. The Escalier du Midi was opened to the public on 25 August 1819. But there were no further budget allocations for the completion of the Louvre Palace during the reigns of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-Philippe I , while
9666-437: The Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the completion of the Cour Carrée. On the courtyard's southern side the Pavillon des Arts was completed in 1663, with a design by Le Vau that echoed that of the Pavillon de l'Horloge. Most of the northern wing was completed in the mid-1660s, though without a salient central pavilion as had been built on the west and south (Pavillon de l'Horloge, Pavillon des Arts) or on
9845-439: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It
10024-407: The Musée des Arts Décoratifs . In total, some 51,615 square meters (555,000 square feet) in the palace complex are devoted to public exhibition floor space. Many sections of the Louvre are referred to as " wings " ( ailes ) and " pavilions " ( pavillons ) – typically, the pavilions are the blocks at either the end or the center of a wing. In the Louvre's context, the word "wing" does not denote
10203-423: The Musée des Plans-Reliefs . During the reign of Louis XVI , the comte d’Angiviller promoted the use of the Grande Galerie as a public museum, tasked Hubert Robert with preparing it, and had some paintings transferred there from Versailles in 1785. But the gallery was only opened to the public after the start of the French Revolution , as the Muséum central des arts opened on 10 August 1793. Together with
10382-420: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It
10561-406: The Palace of Versailles , despite his minister Colbert's insistence on completing the Louvre. Louis XIV had already left the Louvre from the beginning of 1666, immediately after the death of his mother Anne of Austria in her ground-floor apartment, and would never reside there again, preferring Versailles, Vincennes , Saint-Germain-en-Laye , or if he had to be in Paris, the Tuileries . From
10740-404: The Palazzo Pitti . The entire wing was completed in 1607. The gallery is 13 meters wide, and was originally 460 meters long. The eastern part was built first. The original plans specified the western part would begin after a large pavilion marking the location of the wall of Charles V , but this was changed in 1603, when construction of the western part began at the midpoint between the two ends,
10919-399: The Pavillon de Marsan , with the intent to expand it all the way to the Pavillon de Beauvais on the northwestern corner of the Cour Carrée. By the end of Napoleon's rule the works had progressed up to the rue de l'Échelle [ fr ] . The architectural design of the southern façade of that wing replicated that attributed to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau for the western section of
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#173277333761111098-439: The Pavillon de l'Horloge , and of a wing further north that would start the quadrupling of the Louvre's courtyard. Architect Jacques Lemercier won the design competition against Jean Androuet du Cerceau , Clément II Métezeau , and the son of Salomon de Brosse . The works were stopped in 1628 at a time of hardship for the kingdom and state finances, and only progressed very slowly if at all until 1639. In 1639 Lemercier started
11277-404: The Petite Galerie in the east and the Pavillon de Flore in the west. The midpoint was marked with the Pavillon de la Lanterne (today's Pavillon de Lesdiguières ), which was originally designed to match the south façade of the Petite Galerie at the eastern end. Further west, the location of the moat of Charles V's wall was indicated by a bay widened by two niches. The design of the eastern half
11456-433: The Salon Carré and the Rotonde d'Apollon (formerly Salon du Dôme ) on the first floor (replaced in the 1850s by the Escalier Daru ). The two architects also remade the interior design of the Grande Galerie , in which they created nine sections separated by groups of monumental columns, and a system of roof lighting with lateral skylights . On the eastern front of the Tuileries Palace , Percier and Fontaine had
11635-471: The Salon Carré it became the core of the Louvre's exhibition spaces, soon enlarged to the Galerie d'Apollon (1797) and the ground-floor summer apartment of Anne of Austria (1800), and later expanded into the wings around the Cour Carrée . Hubert Robert , after being appointed the museum's first "keeper of paintings", projected to improve the lighting of the gallery, by sealing its windows and opening skylights in its vaulted ceiling. This innovative plan
11814-399: The Salon Carré , Grande Galerie , and Pavillon de Flore . In the middle of the Grande Galerie are the Guichets du Carrousel , a composition of three monumental arches flanked by two narrow pavilions named respectively after the Duke of Lesdiguières and Henri de La Trémoille ( Pavillon Lesdiguières and Pavillon La Trémoille ). Further west are the Pavillon des Sessions ,
11993-459: The Tuileries Palace ; many courtiers moved into the Louvre. Many of these in turn emigrated during the French Revolution , and more artists swiftly moved into their vacated Louvre apartments. In December 1804, Napoleon appointed Pierre Fontaine as architect of the Tuileries and the Louvre. Fontaine had forged a strong professional bond with his slightly younger colleague Charles Percier . Between 1805 and 1810 Percier and Fontaine completed
12172-428: The Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by
12351-436: The World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
12530-450: The giant order of the western section of the Grande Galerie , built in the early 17th century and attributed to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau , for their design of the northern wing to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre along the rue de Rivoli . In the 1850s during Napoleon III's Louvre expansion , architects Louis Visconti then Hector Lefuel built the Denon and Richelieu pavilions as echoes of Lemercier's Pavillon de l'Horloge. In
12709-451: The ionic order , but this was changed in 1603 to the composite order with sculpted dolphins celebrating the 1601 birth of the Dauphin , the future Louis XIII . The dolphin order was also used for Henri IV's additions to the Cour Ovale at the Palace of Fontainebleau . On the southern side, Jacques Lemercier commissioned Nicolas Poussin in 1641 to decorate the ceiling of the Grande Galerie, but Poussin returned to Rome in 1642 leaving
12888-689: The provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco; the Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to
13067-556: The rue de Rivoli are three courtyards, from east to west the Cour Khorsabad (formerly Cour de la Poste ), Cour Puget (formerly Cour des Guichets or Cour de l'Horloge ), and Cour Marly (formerly Cour d'Honneur or Cour du Ministre ). On the side facing the rue de Rivoli, the main salient feature is the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque , which connects to the Pavillon Richelieu through
13246-525: The " Nouveau Louvre " was inaugurated by the Emperor on 14 August 1857. The new buildings were arranged around the space then called Place Napoléon-III , later Square du Louvre and, since the 20th century, Cour Napoléon. Before his death, Visconti also had time to rearrange the Louvre's gardens outside the Cour Carrée , namely the Jardin de l'Infante to the south, the Jardin de la Colonnade to
13425-427: The ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in
13604-493: The 1660s, stated that he had seen "in an old Latin-Saxon glossary, Leouar is translated castle" and thus took Leouar to be the origin of Louvre. According to Keith Briggs, Sauval's theory is often repeated, even in recent books, but this glossary has never been seen again, and Sauval's idea is viewed as obsolete. Briggs suggests that H. J. Wolf's proposal in 1969 that Louvre derives instead from Latin Rubras , meaning "red soil",
13783-578: The 1680s a new era started for the Louvre, with comparatively little external construction and fragmentation of its interior spaces across a variety of different uses. After the definitive departure of the royal court for Versailles in 1682, the Louvre became occupied by multiple individuals and organizations, either by royal favor or simply squatting . Its tenants included the Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain during her stay in Paris in
13962-416: The 17th and 18th centuries the Pavillon du Milieu or Gros Pavillon is now generally referred to as Pavillon de l'Horloge , or Pavillon Sully (especially when considered from the west), or also Pavillon Lemercier after the architect Jacques Lemercier who first designed it in 1624. In some cases, the same name has designated different parts of the building at different times. For example, in
14141-592: The 17th and 19th centuries. In the late 20th century, the Grand Louvre project increased visitor access and gallery space, including by adding the Louvre Pyramid in the courtyard Cour Napoléon. For more than three centuries, the history and design of the Louvre was closely intertwined with that of the Tuileries Palace , created to the west of the Louvre by Queen Catherine de' Medici in 1564, with its main block finally demolished in 1883. The Tuileries
14320-507: The 1860s and 1870s, Lefuel used designs inspired by the Lescot Wing even as he replaced the prior giant-order patterns created by Androuet du Cerceau and replicated by Percier and Fontaine. Finally, in the 1980s, I. M. Pei made explicit reference to André Le Nôtre , the designer of the Tuileries Garden , for his design of the Louvre Pyramid . This section focuses on matters of design, construction and decoration, leaving aside
14499-564: The 18th century, and gave it double height by creating a visitors' gallery in what had formerly been the Lescot Wing's attic. Further west, Percier and Fontaine created the monumental entrance for the Louvre Museum (called Musée Napoléon since 1804). This opened from what was at the time called the Place du Louvre , abutting the Lescot Wing to the west, into the Rotonde de Mars ,
14678-489: The 1980s on a design by I. M. Pei , is now the centerpiece of the entire Louvre complex. It leads to the underground Hall Napoléon which in turn serves a vast complex of underground spaces, including the Carrousel du Louvre commercial mall around an inverted pyramid further west. The present-day Louvre Palace is a vast complex of wings and pavilions which, although superficially homogeneous in scale and architecture,
14857-612: The 1980s, as the Salle Saint-Louis . In the late 1350s, the growth of the city and the insecurity brought by the Hundred Years' War led Etienne Marcel , provost of the merchants (i.e. municipal leader) of Paris, to initiate the construction of a new protective wall beyond that of Philip II. King Charles V continued the project in the 1360s, and it was later known as the Wall of Charles V . From its westernmost point at
15036-506: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;
15215-682: The 19th century, the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque referred to what was later called the Porte Jean-Goujon (still later, Porte Barbet-de-Jouy ), on the south side of the Grande Galerie facing the Seine, before becoming the name for the main pavilion of the Richelieu Wing On the rue de Rivoli, its exact symmetrical point from the Louvre Pyramid. The main room on the first floor of the Lescot Wing has been
15394-773: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed
15573-703: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French
15752-917: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,
15931-497: The Cour Carrée in the late 1750s. The southern Guichet des Arts was designed by Maximilien Brébion [ fr ] in 1779 and completed in 1780. Three arched guichets were also opened in 1760 under the Grande Galerie , through the Pavillon Lesdiguières and immediately to its west. The 1790s were a time of turmoil for the Louvre as for the rest of France. On 5 October 1789, King Louis XVI and his court were forced to return from Versailles and settled in
16110-520: The Cour du Carrousel, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was erected in 1806–1808 to commemorate Napoleon 's military victories. On 10 April 1810, Percier and Fontaine's plan for the completion of the Grand Dessein of uniting the Louvre and the Tuileries was approved, following a design competition among forty-seven participants. Works started immediately afterwards to build an entirely new wing starting from
16289-538: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of
16468-484: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained
16647-549: The Grande Galerie on the occasion of their wedding, which was celebrated in the Salon Carré, temporarily converted into a chapel. In 1849–1851, the exterior façade of the Eastern section of the Grande Galerie was renovated by architect Félix Duban , who replaced most of the stonework even though he scrupulously respected most of the original design. Duban replaced a former passageway, the guichet de la rue des Orties , with
16826-465: The Grande Galerie was also decorated with wood panelling, even though that work was left unfinished. The Salon Carré , however, was still undecorated when the court left for Versailles in the late 1670s. Meanwhile, landscape architect André Le Nôtre redesigned the Tuileries, first created in 1564 in the Italian style, as a French formal garden . The other major project of the 1660s was to create
17005-425: The Grande Galerie was the theater of the "touching" ceremony, four times a year, in which the king was reputed to miraculously cure victimes of scrofula by simply touching them and pronouncing the ritual words "God heal you, the king touches you" ( French : Dieu te guérisse, le roi te touche ). From 1697 on, the French state's collection of plans-reliefs was stored in the Grande Galerie, of which it occupied all
17184-691: The Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as a second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as
17363-477: The Louvre into a royal residence for the first time, with the transformation designed by his architect Raymond du Temple . This was a political statement as well as a utility project – one scholar wrote that Charles V "made the Louvre his political manifesto in stone" and referred to it as "a remarkably discursive monument-a form of architectural rhetoric that proclaimed the revitalization of France after years of internal strife and external menace." The curtain wall
17542-597: The Louvre was to its immediate east, the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon , appropriated by the monarchy following the betrayal of the Constable of Bourbon in 1523 and mostly demolished in October 1660 to give way to the Louvre's expansion. The last remains of the Petit-Bourbon were cleared in the 1760s. This sections provides a summary description of the present-day complex and its main constituent parts. The Louvre Palace
17721-507: The Louvre's Grosse Tour . Louis IX added constructions in the 1230s, included the medieval Louvre's main ceremonial room or Grande Salle in which several historical events took place, and the castle's first chapel. The partly preserved basement part of that program was rediscovered during heating installations at the Louvre in 1882–1883, and has since then been known successively as the Salle de Philippe Auguste and, after renovation in
17900-435: The Louvre's façade towards the city and thus complete the Cour Carrée on its eastern side. It involved a convoluted process, with the king's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert first sidelining Le Vau and then summoning Gian Lorenzo Bernini from Italy. Bernini stayed in Paris from 2 June to 20 October 1665, but none of his five striking designs gained approval, even though some building works started on their basis. Eventually
18079-437: The Louvre's main interior spaces, especially the salle des Sept-Cheminées , Galerie d'Apollon and Salon Carré , which Prince-President Louis Napoleon inaugurated on 5 June 1851 Expropriation arrangements were made for the completion of the Louvre and the rue de Rivoli , and the remaining buildings that cluttered the space that is now the Cour Napoléon were cleared away. . No new buildings had been started, however, by
18258-604: The Marais , until the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War resulted in the monarchy leaving Paris altogether; in the 1420s and 1430s Charles VII resided largely at or near Bourges , whereas his rival English claimant Henry VI 's representative, the Duke of Bedford , generally resided in his base of Rouen , and while in Paris in his Hôtel des Tournelles . Even after Charles VII's ceremonial entry into Paris in 1437 and after
18437-451: The OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as a second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and
18616-530: The Petite Galerie built up and decorated as the Salle des Peintures , with portraits of the former kings and queens of France. A portrait of Marie de' Medici by Frans Pourbus the Younger , still in the Louvre , is a rare remnant of this series. In 1624, Louis XIII initiated the construction on a new building echoing the Pavillon du Roi on the northern end of the Lescot Wing , now known as
18795-530: The Tour du Bois, the new wall extended east along the north bank of the Seine to the old wall, enclosing the Louvre and greatly reducing its military value. Remains of that wall have been uncovered and reconstructed in the present-day Louvre's Carrousel du Louvre . Shortly after becoming king in 1364 Charles V abandoned the Palais de la Cité , which he associated with the insurgency led by Etienne Marcel , and made
18974-427: The building's design. Lescot tore down the western wing of the old Louvre Castle and rebuilt it as what has become known as the Lescot Wing , ending on the southern side with the Pavillon du Roi . In the latter, he designed in 1556 the ceiling for Henry II's bedroom, still largely preserved after relocation in 1829 to the Louvre's Colonnade Wing, for which he departed from the French tradition of beamed ceilings. On
19153-490: The city, he opted to build the Louvre as a fortress just outside the wall's junction with the Seine on its right bank , on the road to the Duchy of Normandy that was still controlled by his English rivals. Completed in 1202, the new fortress was situated in what is now the southwest quadrant of the Cour Carrée , and some of its remains, excavated between late 1983 and late 1985, are conserved underground. The original Louvre
19332-604: The city. The axis begins with the Louvre courtyard, at a point now symbolically marked by a lead copy of Bernini's equestrian statue of Louis XIV , and runs west along the Champs-Élysées to La Défense and slightly beyond. Since 1988, the Louvre Pyramid in the middle of the Cour Napoléon has marked the center of the Louvre complex. At the same time, the Louvre Museum has adopted a toponymy developed by
19511-401: The completion of the Cour Carrée . A separate design a few years later for the Louvre Colonnade , included window shapes on the ground level based on Lescot's for the Pavillon du Roi a century earlier, ensuring visual continuity even though the dramatic colonnade on the upper level was different from anything that had been done at the Louvre so far. In the 1810s, Percier and Fontaine copied
19690-412: The current dimensions of the Cour Carrée . From early 1595 he directed the construction of the Grande Galerie , designed by his competing architects Louis Métezeau and Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau , who are respectively credited with the eastern and western sections of the building by a long tradition of scholarship. This major addition, about 460 meters long, was built along the bank of the Seine. On
19869-519: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French
20048-513: The demolition of the Louvre's old keep. In 1546 he formally commissioned the architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon to modernize the Louvre into a Renaissance style palace, but the project appears to have actually started in 1545 since Lescot ordered stone deliveries in December of that year. The death of Francis I in 1547 interrupted the work, but it restarted under Francis's successor Henry II who on 10 July 1549 ordered changes in
20227-573: The design of the Galerie des Batailles in Versailles Palace , created under Louis-Philippe I for his Musée de l'Histoire de France . Pierre Fontaine advised Louis-Philippe's architect Frédéric Nepveu [ fr ] for that project's zenithal lighting. It also inspired the similar gallery of the Museo del Prado in Madrid . Since 2007, Grande Galerie has also been the title of
20406-466: The design of the north, east, and south facades facing the courtyard of the Cour Carrée: the addition of a full third story with pilasters surmounted by a balustrade, very unlike Lescot's attic story to the west. This change was not completed until the first decade of the 19th century (see below). The works at the Louvre stopped in the late 1670s as the king redirected all construction budgets at
20585-569: The early 1720s, artists, craftsmen, the Academies, and various royal officers. For example, in 1743 courtier and author Michel de Bonneval was granted the right to refurbish much of the wing between the Pavillon des Arts and the Pavillon Sud-Est into his own house on his own expense, including 28 rooms on the ground floor and two mezzanine levels, and an own entrance on the Cour Carrée . After Bonneval's death in 1766 his family
20764-526: The east and the Jardin de l'Oratoire to the north, and also designed the Orangerie and Jeu de Paume on the western end of the Tuileries Garden . In the 1860s, Lefuel also demolished the Pavillon de Flore and nearly half of the Grande Galerie, and reconstructed them on a modified design that included the passageway known as the Guichet de l'Empereur (later Porte du Sud , now Porte des Lions),
20943-417: The east façade is attributed to Perrault, who made the final alterations needed to accommodate a decision to double the width of the south wing. He designed the new south façade, making it more compatible with the east facade and covering Le Vau's original south facade. Perrault redesigned the north wing's city-side facade, and is thought to have been at least partly responsible for an important alteration to
21122-572: The eastern Cour Carrée (square courtyard), which is closed by four wings that form the square of its name, and the central Cour Napoléon , which is open on its western side, beyond the thoroughfare known as Place du Carrousel , towards the Carrousel Garden and the rest of the Tuileries Garden . The Louvre is slightly askew of the Historic Axis ( Axe historique ), a roughly eight-kilometer (five-mile) architectural line bisecting
21301-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French
21480-858: The effective end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453, French monarchs preferred residing in the Châteaux of the Loire Valley , the Palace of Fontainebleau or, when in Paris, at the Château de Vincennes or the Hôtel des Tournelles. Meanwhile, the Louvre Castle was left in a state of increasing disrepair, even as it remained used as an arsenal and prison. In 1528, after returning from his captivity in Spain following his defeat at Pavia , Francis I ordered
21659-594: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as
21838-459: The existing buildings cleared away to create a vast open space, the Cour du Carrousel , which they had closed with an iron fence in 1801. Somewhat ironically, the clearance effort was facilitated by the Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise , a failed bomb attack on Napoleon on 24 December 1800, which damaged many of the neighborhood's building that were later demolished without compensation. In the middle of
22017-516: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of
22196-524: The first intent to extend the Louvre's courtyard to its current size by doubling the lengths of the wings, even though no implementation was made of such plans until the 1620s. Lescot is also credited with the design of the Petite Galerie , which ran from the southwest corner of the Louvre to the Seine. All work stopped in the late 1560s, however, as the Wars of Religion gathered momentum. In
22375-401: The fitting or remodeling of exhibition spaces within the museum, which are described in the article Louvre . No fewer than twenty building campaigns have been identified in the history of the Louvre Palace. The architect of the largest such campaign, Hector Lefuel , crisply summarized the identity of the complex by noting: " Le Louvre est un monument qui a vécu " (translatable as "The Louvre
22554-915: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,
22733-422: The fortress were supplied by the vaulted chambers of the keep as well as two wings built against the insides of the curtain walls of the western and southern sides. The circular plans of the towers and the keep avoided the dead angles created by square or rectangular designs which allowed attackers to approach out of firing range. Cylindrical keeps were typical of French castles at the time, but few were as large as
22912-715: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being
23091-405: The ground floor at the eastern end of the new wing, Métezeau created a lavishly decorated room that was known as the Salle des Ambassadeurs or Salle des Antiques , later called Salle d'Auguste and now Salle des Empereurs . At the time, the room on the first floor above, later Salon Carré , was known as Grand Salon or Salon du Louvre . Henry IV also had the first floor of
23270-404: The ground floor of the Petite Galerie , which had previously been the venue for the King's Council That "summer apartment" was fitted by architect Louis Le Vau , who had succeeded Lemercier upon the latter's death in 1654. The ceilings, decorated in 1655–1658 by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli who had been recommended by Cardinal Mazarin , are still extant in the suite of rooms now known as
23449-425: The ground floor, Lescot installed monumental stone caryatids based on classical precedents in the salle des gardes , now known as the Salle des Caryatides . On the northern end of the new wing, Lescot created a monumental staircase in the 1550s, long known as the Grand Degré du Roi (now Escalier Henri II , with sculpted ceilings attributed to Jean Goujon . During the early 1560s, Lescot demolished
23628-437: The ground-floor Passage Richelieu (formerly Guichet du Ministère ) between the Cour Puget and Cour Marly . Further west are the Pavillon de Rohan and the Aile de Rohan , built in the early 19th century and named after the nearby rue de Rohan [ fr ] , then the Aile de Marsan and the Pavillon de Marsan , both rebuilt by Hector Lefuel in the 1870s. The Louvre Pyramid , built in
23807-412: The kings resided in the Tuileries . By 1825, Percier and Fontaine's northern wing had only been built up to the rue de Rohan [ fr ] , and made no progress in the following 25 years. Further attempts at budget appropriations to complete the Louvre, led by Adolphe Thiers in 1833 and again in 1840, were rejected by the Chamber of Deputies . From the early days of the Second Republic ,
23986-401: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French
24165-424: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon
24344-501: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,
24523-428: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what
24702-410: The late 1960s, designer Pierre Paulin created new seats for the Grande Galerie. The room was refurbished during the 1990s as part of the Grand Louvre project, with no change of design but installation of air conditioning and other amenities. In the current arrangement of the Louvre's collections, the Grande Galerie is entirely devoted to the display of Italian paintings. The Grande Galerie inspired
24881-404: The latter also known as Pavillon Sully . The section between the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon Sully, known as the Lescot Wing ( Aile Lescot ) as it was designed by architect Pierre Lescot , is the oldest standing part of the entire Louvre Palace. The section between the Pavillon Sully and the Pavillon de Beauvais, which was modeled after the Lescot Wing by architect Jacques Lemercier ,
25060-450: The meantime, beginning in 1564, Catherine de' Medici directed the building of a new residence to the west, outside the wall of Charles V . It became known as the Tuileries Palace because it was built on the site of old tile factories ( tuileries ). Architect Philibert de l'Orme started the project, and was replaced after his death in 1570 by Jean Bullant . A letter of March 1565 indicates that Catherine de' Medici already considered
25239-508: The monumental room at the northern end of the Appartement d'été d'Anne d'Autriche . The entrance door was dominated by a colossal bronze head of the Emperor by Lorenzo Bartolini , installed in 1805. Visitors could either visit the classical antiquities collection ( Musée des Antiques ) in Anne of Austria's rooms or in the redecorated ground floor of the Cour Carrée's southern wing to the left, or they could turn right and access Percier and Fontaine's new monumental staircase, leading to both
25418-429: The monumental staircase on the latter's southern and northern ends between 1807 and 1811. Percier and Fontaine also created the monumental decoration of most of the ground-floor rooms around the Cour Carrée, most of which still retain it, including their renovation of Jean Goujon's Salle des Caryatides . On the first floor, they recreated the former Salle Haute of the Lescot Wing , which had been partitioned in
25597-424: The museum, salle des terres cuites , after 1871 Salle La Caze in honor of donor Louis La Caze , Salle des Bronzes , and since 2021 Salle Etrusque . The room immediately below, now known as Salle des Caryatides , has also been called Salle Basse , Salle Basse des Suisses , Grande Salle , Salle des Gardes , Salle des Antiques (from 1692 to 1793), and Salle des Fleuves in
25776-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by
25955-475: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of
26134-682: The past, among other names. The Sully Wing forms a square of approximately 160 m (520 ft) side length. The protruding sections at the corners and center of each side are known as pavillons . Clockwise from the northwest corner, they are named as follows: Pavillon de Beauvais (after a now-disappeared street ), Pavillon Marengo (after the nearby rue de Marengo ), Pavillon Nord-Est (also Pavillon des Assyriens ), Pavillon Central de la Colonnade (also Pavillon Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois ), Pavillon Sud-Est (also Pavillon des Egyptiens ), Pavillon des Arts , Pavillon du Roi , and Pavillon de l'Horloge ,
26313-401: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French
26492-445: The project as making the Louvre into a focal point for world culture, which he referred to a "Mecca of intelligence". During the Republic's brief existence, the palace was extensively restored by Louvre architect Félix Duban , especially the exterior façades of the Petite Galerie and Grande Galerie , on which Duban designed the ornate portal now known as Porte Barbet-de-Jouy . Meanwhile, Duban restored or completed several of
26671-407: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in
26850-414: The southern and eastern sides. In the courtyard, slightly offset to the northeast, was the cylindrical keep or donjon, known as the Grosse Tour du Louvre (Great Tower of the Louvre), thirty meters high and fifteen meters wide with 4-meter-thick external walls. The keep was encircled by a deep, dry ditch with stone counterscarps to help prevent the scaling of its walls with ladders. Accommodations in
27029-405: The southern and northern ends of the Tuileries Palace, are now considered part of the Louvre Palace. The Carrousel Garden , first created in the late 19th century (during Napoleon III's Louvre expansion ) in what used to be the great courtyard of the Tuileries (or Cour du Carrousel ), is now considered part of the Tuileries Garden . A less high-profile but historically significant dependency of
27208-413: The southern side, Lemercier commissioned Nicolas Poussin to decorate the ceiling of the Grande Galerie . Poussin arrived from Rome in early 1641, but returned to Italy in November 1642 leaving the work unfinished. During Louis XIV 's minority and the Fronde , from 1643 to 1652 the Louvre was left empty as the royal family stayed at the Palais-Royal or outside of Paris; the Grande Galerie served as
27387-425: The southern wing of the old Louvre and started to replace it with a duplication of the Lescot Wing. His plan may have been to create a square complex of a similar size as the old Louvre, not dissimilar to the Château d'Écouen that had been recently completed on Jean Bullant 's design, with an identical third wing to the north and a lower, entrance wing on the eastern side. A contested hypothesis attributes to Lescot
27566-411: The southwestern and northwestern corners (Pavillon du Roi, Pavillon de Beauvais). On 6 February 1661, a fire destroyed the attic of the Grand Salon and much of the Salle des Peintures in the Petite Galerie (though not Anne of Austria's ground-floor apartment). Le Vau was tasked by Louis XIV to lead the reconstruction. He rebuilt the Petite Galerie as the more ornate Galerie d'Apollon , created
27745-404: The space by 1754 with about 120 items placed on wooden tables. This was not intended as an artistic exhibition but served a military purpose, as the plans-reliefs were used to study and prepare defensive and offensive siege operations of the fortified cities and strongholds they represented. The plans-reliefs were removed in 1777 to the Hôtel des Invalides , where most of them are still displayed in
27924-470: The time of the December 1851 coup d'état . On this basis, Napoleon III was able to finally unite the Louvre with the Tuileries in a single, coherent building complex. The plan of the Louvre's expansion were made by Louis Visconti , a disciple of Percier, who died suddenly in December 1853 and was succeeded in early 1854 by Hector Lefuel . Lefuel developed Visconti's plan into a higher and more ornate building concept, and executed it at record speed so that
28103-414: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In
28282-619: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French
28461-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by
28640-425: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of
28819-425: The western front of the Wall of Philip II Augustus , the then new city-wall of Paris. The Louvre's oldest section still standing above ground, its palatial Lescot Wing , dates from the late 1540s, when Francis I started the replacement of the greatly expanded medieval castle with a new design inspired by classical antiquity and Italian Renaissance architecture . Most parts of the current building were constructed in
28998-424: The wing facing the seine are three courtyards, from east to west the Cour du Sphinx (covered as a glass atrium since 1934), Cour Visconti (ground floor covered since 2012), and Cour Lefuel . On the side of the Seine , this wing starts with the north–south Petite Galerie bordering a side garden known as the Jardin de l'Infante , and continues westwards along the Quai François Mitterrand with
29177-414: The work unfinished. In 1661, a fire destroyed the Petite Galerie, which linked the Grande Galerie with the Cour Carrée , and the adjacent 5-bay pavilion containing the Grand Salon at the eastern end of the Grande Galerie. Louis Le Vau reconstructed the Petite Galerie with the Galerie d'Apollon and the Grand Salon as the Salon Carré , raising the 5-bay pavilion by one storey. In the 17th century
29356-481: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of
29535-463: The works of the Cour Carrée that had been left unfinished since the 1670s, despite Marigny's repairs around 1760. They opted to equalize its northern and southern wing with an attic modeled on the architecture of the Colonnade wing , thus removing the existing second-floor ornamentation and sculptures, of which some were by Jean Goujon and his workshop. The Cour Carrée and Colonnade wing were completed in 1808–1809, and Percier and Fontaine created
29714-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as
29893-446: The world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share the official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in
30072-432: Was able to keep the house for a few more years. Some new houses were even erected in the middle of the Cour Carrée , but were eventually torn down on the initiative of the Marquis de Marigny in early 1756. A follow-up 1758 decision led to the clearance of buildings on most of what is now the Place du Louvre in front of the Colonnade, except for the remaining parts of the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon which were preserved for
30251-403: Was constructed beginning in 1595 on the initiative of King Henry IV and was completed in late 1607. It contained an elevated enclosed passageway linking the old Louvre Palace with the Tuileries Palace . The passageway was used for various purposes until the creation of the Louvre Museum in 1793, when it became the exhibition gallery it remains to this day. Originally 460 meters long, the room
30430-531: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but
30609-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul
30788-469: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates
30967-400: Was nearly square in plan, at seventy-eight by seventy-two meters, and enclosed by a 2.6-metre thick crenellated and machicolated curtain wall . The entire structure was surrounded by a water-filled moat . On the outside of the walls were ten round defensive towers: one at each corner and at the center of the northern and western sides, and two pairs respectively flanking the narrow gates on
31146-425: Was pierced with windows, new wings added to the courtyard, and elaborate chimneys, turrets, and pinnacles to the top. Known as the joli Louvre ("pretty Louvre"), Charles V's palace was memorably pictured in the illustration The Month of October of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry . In the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the preferred royal residence in Paris was the Hôtel Saint-Pol in what became
31325-406: Was realized between 1805 and 1810 by Percier and Fontaine , albeit in altered form with lateral skylights at regular intervals. Percier and Fontaine also created nine subdivisions of the long room, separated by groups of columns arranged in the manner of Venetian windows as Robert had imagined. On 2 April 1810, Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria led a procession from the Tuileries throughout
31504-408: Was reduced to its current length of 288 meters following the remodeling of its western section in the 1860s in the wake of Napoleon III's Louvre expansion . Henry IV directed the building of the gallery, which started in 1595. It may have been inspired by the Vasari Corridor in Florence , designed and built in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici , which connects the Uffizi with
31683-411: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of
31862-437: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,
32041-482: Was the premier seat of French executive power during the last third of that period, from the return of Louis XVI and his court from Versailles in October 1789 until the palace was set on fire during the Paris Commune of 1871. The Louvre and Tuileries became physically connected as part of the project called the "Grand Design", with the completion of the Pavillon de Flore in the early 1600s. The Pavillon de Flore and Pavillon de Marsan , which used to respectively mark
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