126-515: The First Bible of Charles the Bald ( BNF Lat. 1), also known as the Vivian Bible , is a Carolingian -era Bible commissioned by Count Vivian of Tours in 845, the lay abbot of Saint-Martin de Tours , and presented to Charles the Bald in 846 on a visit to the church, as shown in the presentation miniature at the end of the book. It is 495 mm by 345 mm and has 423 vellum folia. It
252-629: 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
378-501: A catalogue in eight volumes was compiled. Louvois considered the erection of an opulent building to host it on what would become the Place Vendôme , a project that was however left unexecuted following the minister's death in 1691. The library opened to the public in 1692, under the administration of Abbott Camille le Tellier de Louvois , the minister's son. The Abbé Louvois was succeeded by Jean-Paul Bignon , who in 1721 seized
504-441: 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
630-577: A complete reform of the library's system. Catalogues were made which appeared from 1739 to 1753 in 11 volumes. The collections increased steadily by purchase and gift to the outbreak of the French Revolution , at which time it was in grave danger of partial or total destruction, but owing to the activities of Antoine-Augustin Renouard and Joseph Van Praet it suffered no injury. The library's collections swelled to over 300,000 volumes during
756-522: A copy of any book in France in the National Library. Napoleon furthermore increased the collections by spoil from his conquests. A considerable number of these books were restored after his downfall. During the period from 1800 to 1836, the library was virtually under the control of Joseph Van Praet. At his death it contained more than 650,000 printed books and some 80,000 manuscripts. Following
882-736: A digitized copy of Scenes of Bohemian Life by Henri Murger (1913) became Gallica's millionth document. In February 2019, the five millionth document was a copy of the manuscript "Record of an Unsuccessful Trip to the West Indies" stored in the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine and on 30 March 2023 the ten millionth document was added. As of 2024 , Gallica had made available online approximately 10 million documents : Most of Gallica's collections of texts have been converted into text format using optical character recognition (OCR-processing), which allows full-text search in
1008-662: 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
1134-524: A full city block in Paris, surrounded by rue de Richelieu (west), rue des Petits-Champs (south), rue Vivienne [ fr ] (east), and rue Colbert [ fr ] (north). There are two entrances, respectively on 58, rue de Richelieu and 5, rue Vivienne. This site was the main location of the library for 275 years, from 1721 to 1996. It now hosts the BnF Museum as well as facilities of
1260-521: 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
1386-590: 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
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#17327766242761512-595: 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
1638-427: A period of development that made it the largest and richest collection of books in the world. He was succeeded by his son who was replaced, when executed for treason, by Jérôme Bignon , the first of a line of librarians of the same name. Under de Thou, the library was enriched by the collections of Queen Catherine de Medici . The library grew rapidly during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV , due in great part to
1764-504: 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
1890-646: A process during which many treasures were lost. Henry IV had it moved to the Collège de Clermont in 1595, a year after the expulsion of the Jesuits from their establishment. In 1604, the Jesuits were allowed to return and the collection was moved to the Cordeliers Convent , then in 1622 to the nearby Confrérie de Saint-Côme et de Saint-Damien [ fr ] on the rue de la Harpe . The appointment of Jacques Auguste de Thou as librarian initiated
2016-409: A procession is occurring in the image. Additionally, Charles seems like a mediator between God and man, evident with the hand of God and the curtains that frame the enthroned Charles at the center. There is some uncertainty as to who exactly each person in this image is. The men to Charles’ left and right are not described in the text of the bible, but it is thought that they might be palace officials. In
2142-657: 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
2268-659: A sarcastic allusion to the successful TGV high-speed rail system). After the move of the major collections from the Rue de Richelieu , the National Library of France was inaugurated on 15 December 1996. As of 2016 , the BnF contains roughly 14 million books at its four Parisian sites (Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, Richelieu, Arsenal , and Opéra ) as well as printed documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps and plans, scores, coins, medals, sound documents, video and multimedia documents, and scenery elements. The library retains
2394-547: A series of regime changes in France, it became the Imperial National Library and in 1868 was moved to newly constructed buildings on the Rue de Richelieu designed by Henri Labrouste . Upon Labrouste's death in 1875 the library was further expanded, including the grand staircase and the Oval Room, by academic architect Jean-Louis Pascal . In 1896, the library was still the largest repository of books in
2520-440: A symbolic meaning. They are meant to represent two Old Testament families that guarded David. Along with the guards we see David at the center who is playing the lyre , and his four musicians. All these figures are held within a large mandorla , illustrating the heavenly realm. David appears naked with just a bit of drapery covering his upper half. This is representative of David's modesty and humility. The presentation miniature
2646-619: 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 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,
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#17327766242762772-404: 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
2898-481: 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
3024-518: Is a public establishment under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture . Its mission is to constitute collections, especially the copies of works published in France that must, by law, be deposited there, conserve them, and make them available to the public. It produces a reference catalogue, cooperates with other national and international establishments, as well as participates in research programs. The National Library of France traces its origin to
3150-653: Is an illumination of Charles the Bald receiving the Vivian Bible when he was just 22 years old. The illumination includes both the Pope and Charles the Bald, showing how the Pope and rulers were becoming reliant on each other during the Carolingian period. This illumination replaced the apocalypse miniature as the tailpiece of the Vivian Bible. The illumination has the figures arranged in a circle. This makes it look like
3276-437: 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
3402-578: Is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It is also thought to be the third illuminated Bible to have been made at Tours following the Bamberg Bible ( Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Msc. Bibl. 1) and Moutier-Grandval Bible ( British Library Add MS 10546). The Vivian Bible contains many illuminations , including the Psalms frontispiece , depicting David Composing Psalms, and
3528-536: Is organised: Gallica is the digital library for online users of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its partners. It was established in October 1997. Today it has more than six million digitized materials of various types: books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, cartoons, drawings, prints, posters, maps, manuscripts, antique coins, scores, theater costumes and sets, audio and video materials. All library materials are freely available. On 10 February 2010,
3654-653: 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
3780-675: 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:
3906-611: Is the national library of France , located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as Richelieu and François-Mitterrand . It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including books and manuscripts but also precious objects and artworks, are on display at the BnF Museum (formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles ) on the Richelieu site. The National Library of France
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4032-716: 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
4158-411: 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
4284-497: 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
4410-585: 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
4536-497: 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 ,
4662-632: 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
4788-480: The Gruthuyse collection and with plunder from Milan . Francis I transferred the collection in 1534 to Fontainebleau and merged it with his private library. During his reign, fine bindings became the craze and many of the books added by him and Henry II are masterpieces of the binder's art. Under librarianship of Jacques Amyot , the collection was transferred to Paris and then relocated on several occasions,
4914-488: 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
5040-458: 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
5166-514: 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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5292-399: 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
5418-439: 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
5544-547: 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
5670-619: 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 ,
5796-459: 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
5922-502: 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
6048-556: 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
6174-525: 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
6300-493: 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",
6426-526: 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
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#17327766242766552-416: 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
6678-570: 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
6804-512: 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 ,
6930-489: 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,
7056-612: 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
7182-619: 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
7308-419: The BnF, the library of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (in the Saller Labrouste since 2016), and the library of the École Nationale des Chartes . It was comprehensively renovated in the 2010s and early 2020s on a design by architects Bruno Gaudin [ fr ] and Virginie Brégal. On 14 July 1988, President François Mitterrand announced "the construction and the expansion of one of
7434-497: 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
7560-421: 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
7686-399: The French people." A new administrative organization was established. Napoleon took great interest in the library and among other things issued an order that all books in provincial libraries not possessed by the Bibliothèque Nationale should be forwarded to it, subject to replacement by exchanges of equal value from the duplicate collections, making it possible, as Napoleon said, to find
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#17327766242767812-410: 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
7938-477: 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
8064-427: 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
8190-456: 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
8316-435: 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
8442-485: 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 , 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
8568-437: 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
8694-430: 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
8820-432: The Memory in the World ), a 1956 short film about the library and its collections. 48°50′01″N 2°22′33″E / 48.83361°N 2.37583°E / 48.83361; 2.37583 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
8946-411: 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
9072-530: 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
9198-427: 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
9324-607: The center right it is thought that the figure is Vivian. It was originally thought the man with his back turned to the viewer was Vivian, but this is the Pater (the father). There are also guards in this image which are like the guards in David composing the psalms. These guards are representative of Charles's military force. Biblioth%C3%A8que Nationale The Bibliothèque nationale de France ( French: [biblijɔtɛk nɑsjɔnal də fʁɑ̃s] ; 'National Library of France'; BnF )
9450-490: 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
9576-604: 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
9702-401: 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
9828-570: The current building were constructed in 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
9954-412: 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
10080-513: 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
10206-466: 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
10332-569: 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
10458-526: 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),
10584-417: 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
10710-572: 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
10836-806: 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
10962-459: 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
11088-524: 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
11214-401: 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
11340-422: 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
11466-454: 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
11592-454: 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
11718-481: 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
11844-540: 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
11970-524: The interest of Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert , himself a dedicated collector of books. The site in the Rue de la Harpe becoming inadequate, the library was again moved, in 1666, to two adjacent houses in Rue Vivienne. After Colbert, Louis XIV's minister Louvois also took interest in the library and employed Jean Mabillon , Melchisédech Thévenot , and others to procure books from every source. In 1688,
12096-530: 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 ,
12222-454: The largest and most modern libraries in the world, intended to cover all fields of knowledge, and designed to be accessible to all, using the most modern data transfer technologies, which could be consulted from a distance, and which would collaborate with other European libraries". Due to initial trade union opposition, a wireless network was fully installed only in August 2016. In July 1989,
12348-468: 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 ,
12474-569: The library materials. Each document has a digital identifier, the so-called ARK ( Archival Resource Key ) of the National Library of France and is accompanied by a bibliographic description. Raoul Rigault , leader during the Paris Commune in 1871, was known for habitually occupying the library and reading endless copies of the newspaper Le Père Duchesne . Alain Resnais directed Toute la mémoire du monde ( transl. All
12600-450: 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
12726-616: 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
12852-429: 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
12978-424: 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
13104-541: The opportunity of the collapse of John Law 's Mississippi Company . The company had been relocated by Law into the former palace of Cardinal Mazarin around Hôtel Tubeuf , and its failure freed significant space in which the Library would expand (even though the Hotel Tubeuf itself would remain occupied by French East India Company and later by France's financial bureaucracy until the 1820s). Bignon also instituted
13230-682: 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 ,
13356-414: The presentation miniature, in which Charles the Bald receives the book. The psalms frontispiece is said to have connections with the prophet Audradas because of the writing above David's head. This connection can also be seen with the four virtues which are in the corners of the painting. These virtues are depicted as women on clouds with their arms outstretched. We can see David's guards, who also have
13482-501: 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
13608-722: The radical phase of the French Revolution when the private libraries of aristocrats and clergy were seized. After the establishment of the French First Republic in September 1792, "the Assembly declared the Bibliothèque du Roi to be national property and the institution was renamed the Bibliothèque Nationale . After four centuries of control by the Crown, this great library now became the property of
13734-566: The royal library founded at the Louvre Palace by Charles V in 1368. Charles had received a collection of manuscripts from his predecessor, John II , and transferred them to the Louvre from the Palais de la Cité . The first librarian of record was Claude Mallet, the king's valet de chambre, who made a sort of catalogue, Inventoire des Livres du Roy nostre Seigneur estans au Chastel du Louvre . Jean Blanchet made another list in 1380 and Jean de Bégue one in 1411 and another in 1424. Charles V
13860-536: The services of the architectural firm of Dominique Perrault were retained. The design was recognized with the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 1996. The construction was carried out by Bouygues . Construction of the library ran into huge cost overruns and technical difficulties related to its high-rise design, so much so that it was referred to as the "TGB" or " Très Grande Bibliothèque " ( lit. ' Very Large Library ' ,
13986-526: 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
14112-405: 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
14238-529: 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
14364-425: 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
14490-521: 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
14616-525: 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
14742-445: The use of the Rue de Richelieu complex for some of its collections. The Manuscripts department houses the largest collection of medieval and modern manuscripts worldwide. The collection includes medieval chansons de geste and chivalric romances , eastern literature, eastern and western religions, ancient history, scientific history, and literary manuscripts by Pascal, Diderot, Apollinaire, Proust, Colette, Sartre, etc. The collection
14868-472: 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
14994-519: 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
15120-677: The world, although it has since been surpassed by other libraries for that title. By 1920, the library's collection had grown to 4,050,000 volumes and 11,000 manuscripts. In 2024, the library removed four 19th-century books from its public access, namely two volumes of The Ballads of Ireland published in 1855, a bilingual anthology of Romanian poetry dating from 1856, and book of the Royal Horticultural Society published between 1862 and 1863, after tests indicated that their covers and bindings were coloured using green pigments containing arsenic . The Richelieu site occupies
15246-460: Was a patron of learning and encouraged the making and collection of books. It is known that he employed Nicholas Oresme , Raoul de Presles (conseiller de Charles V) [ fr ] , and others to transcribe ancient texts. At the death of Charles VI , this first collection was unilaterally bought by the English regent of France, the Duke of Bedford , who transferred it to England in 1424. It
15372-543: 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
15498-448: Was apparently dispersed at his death in 1435. Charles VII did little to repair the loss of these books, but the invention of printing resulted in the starting of another collection in the Louvre inherited by Louis XI in 1461. Charles VIII seized a part of the collection of the kings of Aragon . Louis XII , who had inherited the library at Blois , incorporated the latter into the Bibliothèque du Roi and further enriched it with
15624-400: 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
15750-556: 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
15876-482: 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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