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150-681: 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 a defensive castle , it has served several government-related functions in

300-627: 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

450-437: 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

600-639: A consular and soon to be imperial residence. His major addition to the palace-garden complex was the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the large courtyard between the Tuileries Palace and the Louvre, This was modeled after the triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, and was designed to be the ceremonial entrance to his palace, It also became the centerpiece of the large parade ground where Louis XIV had held his Carrousel procession. In 1801, Napoleon ordered

750-656: 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

900-630: A gallery devoted to contemporary art. The Orangerie , originally used to keep citrus trees during the winter, was also made into a gallery, with the eastern wing devoted to the display of eight paintings of the Water Lilies series by Claude Monet . They were installed there in 1927, shortly after Monet's death. During World War II , the Jeu de paume was used by the Germans as a warehouse for art they had stolen or confiscated . An exposition of work by

1050-535: A garden. For that purpose, Catherine bought land west of Paris, just outside the city Wall of Charles V . It was bordered on the south by the Seine , and on the north by the faubourg Saint-Honoré , a road in the countryside continuing the Rue Saint-Honoré . Since the 13th century this area had been occupied by tile-making factories called tuileries (from the French tuile , meaning "tile"). The new residence

1200-423: A gardener at the Tuileries. He immediately began transforming the Tuileries into a formal jardin à la française , a style he had first developed at Vaux-le-Vicomte and perfected at Versailles , based on symmetry, order and long perspectives. Le Nôtre's gardens were designed to be seen from above, from a building or terrace. He eliminated the street which separated the palace and the garden, and replaced it with

1350-588: 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

1500-647: A mob stormed the palace, the King was imprisoned, and the King's Swiss Guards fell back through the gardens where they were massacred. The new revolutionary government, the National Convention , met in the Salle du Manège , the former riding academy in the northwest corner of the gardens, which was the largest meeting hall in the city. Louis XVI was put on trial by the National Convention at

1650-515: A new Pavillon des Sessions for state functions, and the monumental Guichets du Carrousel replacing those created in 1760 near the Pavillon Lesdiguières . Rive Droite The Rive Droite ( French pronunciation: [la ʁiv dʁwat] ; Right Bank) is most commonly associated with the river Seine in central Paris . Here, the river flows roughly westwards, cutting the city into two parts. When facing downstream,

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1800-588: 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

1950-569: 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 the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon

2100-593: 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

2250-504: 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

2400-600: 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

2550-543: A rectangular ornamental lake of 65 metres by 45 metres with a fountain supplied with water by the new pump called La Samaritaine , which had been built in 1608 on the Pont Neuf . The area between the palace and the former moat of Charles V was turned into the "New Garden" (Jardin Neuf) with a large fountain in the center. Though Henry IV never lived in the Tuileries Palace, which was continually under reconstruction, he did use

2700-415: A ring of fire 7 metres (23 ft) in diameter hanging from the bottom. It is also the first such cauldron that burns without using fossil fuels. The final torch bearers in their respective torch relays who lit the flame during their respective opening ceremonies were: The cauldron has remained landed during the day and has risen into the sky at sunset and when lit during both opening ceremonies, anchored to

2850-490: A small number dating back to the early 19th century or earlier. The Couvert was extensively replanted in the 1990s, with eight hundred trees added since 1997. Cyclone Lothar in 1999 caused extensive damage, and brought down a number of the oldest trees. The two outdoor cafes in the Grand Couvert are named after two famous cafes once located in the garden; the café Very, which had been on the terrasse des Feuillants in

3000-473: A statue of Wisdom. The ceremony then moved on the a larger event in the Champs de Mars . Two months later, however, Robespierre was accused of excessive ambition, arrested and sent to the guillotine. During their storming, the gardens had been badly damaged, with many buildings set on fire. The National Convention assigned the renewal of the gardens to the painter Jacques-Louis David, and to his brother in law,

3150-548: A terrace looking down upon flowerbeds bordered by low boxwood hedges and filled with designs of flowers. In the centre of the flowerbeds he placed three ornamental lakes with fountains. In front of the centre of the first fountain he laid out the Grande Allée, which extended 350 metres. He built two other alleys, lined with chestnut trees, on either side. He crossed these three main alleys with small lanes, to create compartments planted with diverse trees, shrubs and flowers. On

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3300-401: 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

3450-477: 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

3600-528: Is decorated by two large vases which used to be in the gardens of Versailles, and two statues by Aristide Maillol ; the Monument to Cézanne on the north and the Monument aux morts de Port Vendres on the south. The Moat of Charles V is a vestige of the original fortifications of the Medieval Louvre Castle , which was then at the edge of the city. It was rebuilt by Charles V of France in

3750-435: 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

3900-653: 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

4050-671: 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:

4200-662: 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

4350-411: 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

4500-489: 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

4650-412: The 1900 Paris Universal Exposition on 22 September 1900, in honour of the twenty-two thousand mayors of France, served under large tents. The Tuileries Garden was filled with entertainments for the public; acrobats, puppet theatres, lemonade stands, small boats on the lakes, donkey rides, and stands selling toys. It was a meeting for major commercial events, such as the first Paris Motor Show in 1898. At

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4800-581: The 1900 Summer Olympics , the Gardens hosted the fencing events. During the First World War (1914–1918), the gardeners were drafted into the army, and maintenance of the garden was reduced to a minimum. The statues were surrounded by sandbags. In 1918, two German long-range artillery shells landed in the garden. In the years between the two World Wars, the Jeu de paume tennis court was turned into

4950-538: The Battle of Waterloo and Bourbon restoration , the horses were sent back to Venice and replaced in 1826 by a new group of sculpture, selected by Charles X , representing the triumph of peace. The elevated terrace between the Carrousel and the rest of the garden used to be at the front of the Tuileries Palace. After the palace was burned in 1870, it was made into a road, which was put underground in 1877. The terrace

5100-496: 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 ,

5250-674: The French Revolution began, King Louis XVI and family were brought against his will to the Tuileries Palace. The garden was reserved exclusively for the royal family in the morning, then open to the public in the afternoon. Queen Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin were given a part of the garden for her private use, first at the west end of the Promenade Bord d'eaux, then at the edge of the Place Louis XV. After

5400-542: The French Wars of Religion and did not return. The gardens were pillaged. However, the new king, Henry IV , returned in 1595 and, with his chief landscape gardener Claude Mollet , restored and embellished the gardens. Henry built a chamille, or covered arbor, the length of the garden, Another alley was planted with mulberry trees where he hoped to cultivate silkworms and start a silk industry in France. He also built

5550-587: The Grand Louvre project launched by President François Mitterrand , the Belgian landscape architect Jacques Wirtz remade the garden of the Carrousel, adding labyrinths and a fan of low hedges radiating from the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the square. In 1998, under President Jacques Chirac , works of modern sculpture by Jean Dubuffet , Henri Laurens , Étienne Martin , Henry Moore , Germaine Richier , Auguste Rodin and David Smith were placed in

5700-628: 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

5850-693: The Monuments Men and they were brought to the Orangerie, in a program to restore them to owners or surviving family members. Until the 1960s, most sculpture in the garden dated from the 18th or 19th century. In 1964–65, André Malraux , the Minister of Culture for President Charles de Gaulle , removed the 19th century statues which surrounded the Place du Carrousel and replaced them with contemporary sculptures by Aristide Maillol . In 1994, as part of

6000-458: 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

6150-560: 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

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6300-399: 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

6450-437: 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

6600-545: 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

6750-619: 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 ,

6900-456: 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

7050-502: 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

7200-556: 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

7350-525: 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

7500-451: The 14th century, Two stairways parallel to the Arc du Triumph du Carrousel lead down into the moat. On the west side of the moat are traces left by the fighting during the unsuccessful siege of Paris by Henry IV of France in 1590 during the French Wars of Religion . Since 1994 the moat has been decorated with statues from the façade of the old Tuileries Palace and with bas- reliefs made in

7650-492: 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",

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7800-526: 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

7950-416: 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

8100-569: 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

8250-421: 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 , the monumental room at

8400-544: The 18th–19th century; and the café Renard, which in the 18th century had been a popular meeting place on the western terrace. The alleys of the Couvert are decorated with two exedra , low curving walls built to display statues, which were installed during the French Revolution. They were completed in 1799 by Jean-Charles-Alexandre Moreau , and are the only surviving elements of a larger proposed garden plan by painter Jacques-Louis David made in 1794. They are now decorated with plaster casts of moldings on mythological themes from

8550-433: 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,

8700-433: 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

8850-424: The 19th century during the Restoration . These were originally intended to replace the Napoleonic bas-reliefs on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, but they were never put in place. The Grand Carré (Large Square) is the eastern, open part of the Tuileries Garden, close to the Louvre, which still follows the formal plan of the Garden à la française created by André Le Nôtre in the 17th century. The eastern part of

9000-422: 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

9150-487: 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

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9300-419: 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

9450-412: The Emperor was not in Paris, usually from May to November, the entire garden, including his private garden and the playground, were opened to the public. In 1870, Napoleon III was defeated and captured by the Prussians , and Paris was the scene of the uprising of the Paris Commune . A red flag flew over the palace, and it could be visited for fifty centimes. When the army arrived and fought to recapture

9600-420: The French Revolution, when it was used as the meeting hall of the revolutionary parliament. The garden was entirely enclosed, and was used exclusively by the royal family when they were in residence, but When the king and court were absent from Paris, the gardens were turned into a pleasure spot for the nobility. In 1630 a parterre at the west end of the garden, between the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace, where

9750-417: The German sculptor Arno Breker , a favourite of Hitler, was held in the Orangerie. The liberation of Paris in 1944 saw considerable fighting in the garden between the Germans and the French resistance. Monet's paintings were damaged during the fighting. In 1946, after the end of World War II, many masterpieces from private collections were recovered in Germany by the French Commission for Art Recovery and

9900-429: The Grand Carré, surrounding the circular pond, was the private garden of the King under Louis Philippe and Napoleon III , separated from the rest of the Tuileries by a fence. Most of the statues in the Grand Carré were put in place in the 19th century. The large round pond is surrounded by statues on themes from antiquity, allegory, and ancient mythology. Statues in violent poses alternate with those in serene poses. On

10050-405: 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

10200-438: The King's failed attempt to escape France on 21 June 1791, the King and family were placed under house arrest in the palace. The royal family was allowed to walk in the park on the evening of 18 September 1791, during the festival organized to celebrate the new French Constitution , when the alleys of the park were illuminated with pyramids and rows of lanterns. But as the Revolution took a more radical turn, On 10 August 1792 ,

10350-474: 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

10500-425: 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

10650-453: 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

10800-432: 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

10950-433: 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

11100-576: The Manège, and was sentenced to death. Afterwards the Tuileries became the National Garden (Jardin National) of the new French Republic . The Convention ordered that statues from the former royal gardens of Marly, Versailles and Fontainebleau be brought to Paris and installed in the National Garden. The originals are now in the Louvre, with copies taking their place in the gardens. The garden

11250-554: 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

11400-575: 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

11550-579: 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

11700-525: The accidental death of her husband, Henry II , Queen Catherine de' Medici decided to leave her residence of the Hôtel des Tournelles , at the eastern part of Paris, near the Bastille . Together with her son, the new king of France Francis II , her other children and the royal court, she moved to the Louvre Palace . Five years later, in 1564, she decided to build a new residence with more space for

11850-489: The architect August Cheval de Saint-Hubert. They conceived a garden decorated with Roman porticos, monumental porches, columns, and other classical decoration. The project of David and Saint-Hubert was never completed. All that remains today are the two exedres , semicircular low walls crowned with statues by the two ponds in the centre of the garden. Napoleon Bonaparte moved into the Tuileries Palace on 19 February 1800 as First Consul , and began making improvements to suit

12000-541: The beginning of the 21st century, French landscape architects Pascal Cribier and Louis Benech have been working to restore some of the early features of the André Le Nôtre garden. Starting in November, 2021, ninety-two elm trees are being added to the Grande Allée to recreate its historic appearance. Since the beginning of 2020, a project for the erection of a large national memorial is also being prepared,

12150-424: 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

12300-469: The centre with a waterjet of 12 m (39 ft) height, additional powerful waterjets from each corner to the center. The terraces frame the western entrance of the garden, and provide another viewpoint to see the garden from above. Le Nôtre wanted his grand perspective from the palace to the western end of the garden to continue outside the garden. In 1667, he made plans for an avenue with two rows of trees on either side, which would have continued west to

12450-488: 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

12600-479: The city, the Communards deliberately burned the Tuileries Palace, and tried to burn the Louvre as well. The ruins, burned out inside but with walls largely intact, were torn down in 1883. The empty site of the palace, between the two pavilions of the Louvre, became part of the garden. Dozens of statues were added to the garden. It also served as the setting for large civic events such as the banquet given during

12750-604: 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

12900-400: 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

13050-627: The construction of a new street along the northern edge of the Tuileries Garden through space that had been occupied by the riding school and stables built by Marie de' Medici, and the private gardens of aristocrats and convents and religious orders that had been closed during the Revolution. This new street also took part of the Terrasse des Feuillants, which had been occupied by cafés and restaurants. The new street, lined with arcades on

13200-412: 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

13350-512: 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

13500-462: 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

13650-567: 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

13800-524: 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),

13950-413: 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

14100-572: 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

14250-868: 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

14400-457: 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

14550-500: The first free flight of a manned hydrogen balloon, was made from the garden on 1 December 1783 by Jacques Alexandre César Charles and Nicolas Louis Robert . The King watched the flight from the tower of the palace. The first trial of the balloon was attended by the first American ambassador to Paris, Benjamin Franklin . The balloon and passengers landed safely at Nesles-la-Vallée , thirty-one miles from Paris. On 6 October 1789, as

14700-516: 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

14850-400: 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

15000-420: 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

15150-481: The garden, and the restored monarchs moved into the Tuileries Palace. During the July Revolution of 1830, the garden again became a battleground, stormed by opponents of the monarchy. King Charles X was replaced by a constitutional king, Louis Philippe . Louis-Philippe, reluctant to have garden visitors walking by his window, had a large flower garden protected by a moat created to isolate his residence in

15300-468: The garden, though entrance to the north side of the garden, prior to the construction of Rue Saint-Honoré by Napoleon , was obstructed by residences, convents and private gardens. Certain holidays, such as August 25, the feast day of Saint Louis , were celebrated with concerts and fireworks in the park. Small food stands were placed in the park, and chairs could be rented for a small fee. Public toilets were added in 1780. A famous early balloon ascent,

15450-484: The garden. Louis XIV quickly imposed his own sense of order on the Tuileries Garden. His architects, Louis Le Vau and François d'Orbay , finally finished the Tuileries Palace, making a proper royal residence. In 1664, Colbert , the King's superintendent of buildings , commissioned the landscape architect André Le Nôtre , to redesign the entire garden. Le Nôtre was the grandson of Pierre Le Nôtre, one of Catherine de' Medici's gardeners, and his father Jean had also been

15600-410: The garden. In 2000, the works of living artists were added; these included works by Magdalena Abakanowicz , Louise Bourgeois , Tony Cragg , Roy Lichtenstein , François Morellet , Giuseppe Penone , Anne Rochette and Lawrence Weiner . Another ensemble of three works by Daniel Dezeuze , Erik Dietman and Eugène Dodeigne , called Prière Toucher (Eng: Please Touch), was added at the same time. At

15750-535: The gardens for relaxation and exercise. After the assassination of his father in 1610, Louis XIII , age nine, became the new owner of the Tuileries Gardens. It became his enormous playground - he used it for hunting, and he kept a small zoo of exotic animals. On the north side of the gardens, his mother and the regent, Marie de' Medici , built stables and a riding school, the Manége , which survived until

15900-401: The gardens with beds of exotic plants and flowers, and new statues. In 1859, he turned the Terrasse du bord-de-l'eau into a playground for his son, Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial . He also constructed twin pavilions. The garden embellishments added by Napoleon III included an indoor handball court, the Jeu de Paume , and an Orangerie . He built a new stone balustrade at the west entrance. When

16050-543: The ground by a wire-like conduit in the middle of the Grand Bassin Rond. The maximum 10,000 people per day visited the cauldron daily during the Olympics, and calls have been made to make the cauldron a permanent fixture. Beginning at the east end, closest to the Louvre, these are some of the primary features of the garden. Also known as the Place du Carrousel , this part of the garden used to be enclosed by

16200-402: 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

16350-583: 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 the Appartement d'été d'Anne d'Autriche . In 1659, Louis XIV instigated

16500-479: 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

16650-538: 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

16800-526: 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 ,

16950-434: 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

17100-468: 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 ,

17250-464: The latter will feature the list of names of the 200,000 slaves freed by the French abolition of 1848. In 2024, a platform was installed in the middle of the Grand Bassin Rond on which the city's new Olympic and Paralympic cauldron rested. Mathieu Lehanneur designed the cauldron as part of a hot air balloon in tribute to the Montgolfier brothers – a helium sphere 30 metres (98 ft) high with

17400-448: 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

17550-402: The moat of the old city walls had been, was turned into a parterre of flower beds and paths. This parterre was transformed into a sort of a playground for the aristocracy. The daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orléans and the niece of Louis XIII, known as La Grande Mademoiselle , held court there, and it became known as known the "Parterre de Mademoiselle". However, in 1652, "La Grande Mademoiselle"

17700-425: 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

17850-420: 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

18000-503: The north side, was named the rue de Rivoli , after Napoleon's victory in 1797. Napoleon made few changes to the interior of the garden. He continued to use the garden for military parades and to celebrate special events, including the passage of his own wedding procession on 2 April 1810, when he married the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria . After Napoleon's fall, Russian and Prussian troops were camped in

18150-549: The northern bank is to the right, whereas the southern bank (or Rive Gauche ) is to the left. The Rive Droite's most famous street is the Champs-Élysées , with others of prominence being the Rue de la Paix , Rue de Rivoli , Avenue de l'Opéra and Avenue Montaigne . The President of France resides on the Rive Droite, at the Élysée Palace . Notable landmarks include the Louvre , Place de la République and Arc de Triomphe . Tuileries Garden In July 1559, after

18300-591: 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

18450-425: The palace from the popular footpaths. This made him unpopular among Parisians and contributed to his downfall in 1848 . In 1852, following another revolution and the short-lived Second Republic , Emperor Napoleon III became owner of the garden, and made major changes. He enlarged the royal reserve within the garden further to the west as far as the north–south alley that crossed the large round basin, He decorated

18600-677: 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 ,

18750-579: 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 the western front of the Wall of Philip II Augustus ,

18900-466: The present Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées. Le Nôtre and his hundreds of masons, gardeners and earth-movers worked on the gardens from 1666 to 1672. In 1682, however, the King, furious with the Parisians for resisting his authority, abandoned Paris and moved to Versailles. In 1667, at the request of the famous author of Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales, Charles Perrault , the Tuileries Garden

19050-496: 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

19200-636: The south side of the park, next to the Seine , he built a long terrace called the Terrasse du bord-de-l'eau, planted with trees, with a view of the river. He built a second terrace on the north side, overlooking the garden, called the Terrasse des Feuillants. On the west side of the garden, beside the present-day Place de la Concorde, he built two ramps in a horseshoe shape Fer à Cheval and two terraces overlooking an octagonal lake Bassin Octogonal 60 m (200 ft) in diameter, respectively 70 m (230 ft) from corner to corner, with one fountain in

19350-452: The south side, starting from the east entrance of the large round pond, they are: On the north side, starting at the west entrance to the pond, they are: The Grand Couvert is the central, tree-covered portion of the garden. It is divided by the Grande Allée, the wide path that runs from the Round pond to the gates of the Place de la Concorde. Most of the trees are relatively recent, with only

19500-524: 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

19650-405: 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

19800-468: 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

19950-423: 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

20100-470: 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

20250-403: 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 the 17th and 19th centuries. In

20400-524: 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

20550-588: The two wings of the Louvre and by the Tuileries Palace . In the 18th century it was used as a parade ground for cavalry and other festivities. The central feature is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel , built to celebrate the victories of Napoleon, with bas-relief sculptures of his battles by Jean-Joseph Espercieux . It was originally surmounted by the Horses of Saint Mark from St Mark's Basilica in Venice , which had been captured in 1798 by Napoleon . In 1815, following

20700-453: The west entrance of the garden. Other statues by Nicolas Coustou and Guillaume Coustou the Elder , Corneille Van Clève , Sébastien Slodtz , Thomas Regnaudin and Coysevox were placed along the Grande Allée. A swing bridge was placed at the west end over the moat, to make access to the garden easier. The creation of the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde ) created a grand vestibule to

20850-472: 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

21000-516: 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

21150-541: 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

21300-543: Was also used to celebrate revolutionary holidays and festivals. On 8 June 1794, a series of events to honour the Cult of the Supreme Being was organized in Paris by Robespierre , with sets and costumes designed by Jacques-Louis David . The opening event was held in the Tuileries. After a hymn written for the occasion, Robespierre set fire to mannequins representing Atheism, Ambition, Egoism and False Simplicity, revealing

21450-622: Was called the Tuileries Palace Catherine commissioned a landscape architect from Florence, Bernard de Carnesse, to create an Italian Renaissance garden for the palace. The new garden was an enclosed space five hundred metres long and three hundred metres wide, separated from the new palace by a lane. It was divided into rectangular compartments by six alleys, and the sections were planted with lawns, flower beds, and small clusters of five trees, called quinconces ; and, more practically, with kitchen gardens and vineyards. It

21600-406: 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

21750-490: Was expelled from the palace and garden for having supported an uprising, the Fronde , against her cousin, the young Louis XIV . Louis XIV had the space transformed into large parade ground, When his first child was born, on Jun 5-6 1662, the parterre was the setting for a spectacular circular horseback promenade by the nobility, slowly circling the parterre. This became known as a " Carrousel ", and gave its name to that portion of

21900-573: Was further decorated with fountains, a labyrinth , a grotto , and faience images of plants and animals, made by Bernard Palissy , whom Catherine had tasked to discover the secret of Chinese porcelain . The development of the garden was interrupted by a civil war. In 1588 Henry III had to flee through the garden to escape capture from the Catholic League on the Day of the Barricades of

22050-400: 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

22200-412: Was opened to the public, with the exception of beggars, "lackeys" and soldiers. It was the first royal garden to be open to the public. After the death of Louis XIV, the five-year-old Louis XV became owner of the Tuileries Garden. In 1719, two large equestrian statuary groups, La Renommée and Mercure , by the sculptor Antoine Coysevox , were brought from the king's residence at Marly and placed at

22350-555: 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

22500-544: 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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