Whereas the name "Louvre Palace" refers to its intermittent role as a monarchical residence, this is neither its original nor its present function. The Louvre has always been associated with French state power and representation, under many modalities that have varied within the vast building and across its long history.
Percier and Fontaine thus captured something of the long-term identity of the Louvre when they described it in 1833 as "viewed as the shrine of [French] monarchy, now much less devoted to the usual residence of the sovereign than to the great state functions, pomp, festivities, solennities and public ceremonies." Except at the very beginning of its existence, as a fortress, and at the very end (nearly exclusively) as a museum building, the Louvre Palace has continuously hosted a variety of different activities.
Military facility The Louvre started as a military facility and retained military uses during most of its history. The initial rationale in 1190 for building a reinforced fortress on the western end of the new fortifications of Paris was the lingering threat of English-held
Normandy. After the construction of the
Wall of Charles V, the Louvre was still part of the defensive arrangements for the city, as the wall continued along the Seine between it and the farther west, but it was no longer on the frontline. In the next centuries, there was no rationale for specific defenses of the Louvre against foreign invasion, but the palace long retained defensive features such as moats to guard against the political troubles that regularly engulfed Paris. The Louvre hosted a significant
arsenal in the 15th and most of the 16th centuries, until its transfer in 1572 to the facility that is now the
Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. From 1697 on, the French state's collection of
plans-reliefs was stored in the
Grande Galerie, of which it occupied all the space by 1754 with about 120 items placed on wooden tables. The plans-reliefs were used to study and prepare defensive and offensive siege operations of the fortified cities and strongholds they represented. In 1777, as plans started being made to create a museum in the Grande Galerie, the plans-reliefs were removed to the
Hôtel des Invalides, where most of them are still displayed in the
Musée des Plans-Reliefs. Meanwhile, a collection of models of ships and navy yards, initially started by naval engineer
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, was displayed between 1752 and 1793 in a next to the
Académie des Sciences's rooms on the first floor of the
Lescot Wing. That collection later formed the core of the maritime museum created in 1827, which remained at the Louvre until 1943 and is now the
Musée national de la Marine. During
Napoleon III's Louvre expansion, the new building program included barracks for the
Imperial Guard in the new North (Richelieu) Wing, and for the
Cent-gardes Squadron in the South (Denon) Wing.
Feudal apex The round keep of
Philip II's Louvre Castle became the symbolic location from which all the king's
fiefs depended. The traditional formula for these, that they "depended on the king for his great keep of the Louvre" () remained in use until the 18th century, long after the keep itself had been demolished in the 1520s.
Archive Philip II also created a permanent repository for the royal archive at the Louvre, following the loss of the French kings' previously itinerant records at the
Battle of Fréteval (1194). That archive, known as the
Trésor des Chartes, was relocated under
Louis IX to the
Palais de la Cité in 1231. A number of state archives were again lodged in the Louvre's vacant spaces in the 18th century, e.g. the minutes of the in the attic of the
Lescot Wing, and the archives of the
Conseil du Roi in several ground-floor rooms in the late 1720s. The kingdom's diplomatic archives were kept in the
Pavillon de l'Horloge until their transfer to Versailles in 1763, after which the archives of the
Maison du Roi and of the soon took their place. In 1770, the archives of the
Chambre des Comptes were placed in the Louvre's attic, followed by the archives of the
Marshals of France in 1778 and those of the
Order of Saint Michael in 1780. In 1825, after the
Conseil d'État had been relocated to the Lemercier Wing, its archives were moved to the entresol below the
Grande Galerie, near the .
Prison The Louvre became a high-profile prison in the immediate aftermath of the
Battle of Bouvines in July 1214, as
Ferdinand, Count of Flanders was taken into captivity by
Philip II. Ferdinand stayed there for 12 years. Other celebrity inmates included
Enguerrand IV de Coucy in 1259,
Guy of Flanders in 1304, Bishop in 1308–1313,
Louis de Dampierre in 1310,
Enguerrand de Marigny in 1314,
John of Montfort in 1341–1345,
Charles II of Navarre in 1356, and
Jean III de Grailly from 1372 to his death there in 1375. The Louvre was reserved for high-ranking prisoners, while other state captives were held in the
Grand Châtelet. Its use as a prison declined after the completion of the
Bastille in the 1370s, but was not ended: for example,
Antoine de Chabannes was held at the Louvre in 1462–1463,
John II, Duke of Alençon in 1474–1476, and
Leonora Dori in 1617 upon the assassination of her husband
Concino Concini at the Louvre's entrance following
Louis XIII's orders.
Treasury Under Philip II and his immediate successors, the royal treasure was kept in the Paris precinct of the
Knights Templar, located at the present-day
Square du Temple. King
Philip IV created a second treasury at the Louvre, whose first documented evidence dates from 1296. Following the
suppression of the Templars' Order by the same Philip IV in the early 14th century, the Louvre became the sole location of the king's treasury in Paris, which remained there in various forms until the late 17th century. In the 16th century, following the reorganization into the in 1523, it was kept in one of the remaining medieval towers of the Louvre Castle, with a dedicated guard.
Place of worship By contrast to the
Palais de la Cité with its soaring
Sainte-Chapelle, the religious function was never particularly prominent at the Louvre. The royal household used the nearby
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois as their
parish church. At the time when
Louis XIV resided at the Louvre, a new chapel was established on the first floor of the
Pavillon de l'Horloge and consecrated on 18 February 1659 as Our Lady of Peace and of Saint Louis, the reference to peace being made in the context of negotiation with
Spain that resulted later that year in the
Treaty of the Pyrenees. This room was of double height, including what is now the pavilion's second floor (or attic). In 1915, the Louvre's architect considered restoring that volume to its original height of more than 12 meters, but did not complete that plan. On 2 April 1810,
Percier and Fontaine had the
Salon Carré temporarily redecorated and converted into a chapel for the wedding of
Napoleon and
Marie Louise of Austria. Meanwhile, in planning the Louvre's expansion and reunion with the Tuileries, Napoleon insisted that a major church should be part of the complex. In 1810 Percier and Fontaine made plans to build it on the northern side of the present-day
Cour Napoléon. Its entrance would have been through a new protruding structure now known as the , facing the symmetrical entrance of the Louvre museum on the southern side in the . The church was to be dedicated to Saint Napoleon, a hitherto obscure figure promoted by Napoleon as patron saint of his incipient dynasty (Napoleon also instituted a national holiday on his birthday on 15 August and called it the ). It was intended to "equal in greatness and magnificence that of the Château de Versailles" (i.e. the
Palace Chapel). Percier and Fontaine initiated work on the Rotonde de Beauvais, which was completed during
Napoleon III's Louvre expansion, but the construction of the main church building was never started.
Home of national representation 's first-floor main room (since 2021 the ), from the
Satire Ménippée on 28 January 1823, in the same room restored by
Percier and Fontaine , anonymous photograph ca. 1860 In 1303, the Louvre was the venue of the second-ever meeting of France's
Estates General, in the wake of the first meeting held the previous year at
Notre-Dame de Paris. The meeting was held in the on the ground floor of the castle's western wing. In 1593, another session of the Estates General was held in the Louvre, one floor up compared with 1303 following reconstruction as the
Lescot Wing. That session, however, was without the presence of King
Henry IV and organized by the
Catholic League with a view to replacing him. The next session of the Estates General in 1614–1615 was held in the larger room of the
Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, in effect a contiguous dependency of the Louvre at that time. During the
Bourbon Restoration, the same first-floor room that had been used for the 1593 meeting, recreated by
Percier and Fontaine as the , was used for the yearly ceremonial opening of the legislative session, which was attended by the king in person – even though ordinary sessions were held in other buildings, namely the
Palais Bourbon for the
Chamber of Deputies and the
Luxembourg Palace for the
Chamber of Peers. During the
July Monarchy, the yearly opening session was located at the Palais Bourbon, but it was brought back to the Louvre under the
Second Empire. From 1857 onwards, the new in the South (Denon) Wing of
Napoleon III's Louvre expansion was used for that purpose. In the 1860s Napoleon III and Lefuel planned a new venue to replace the in the newly purpose-built , but it was not yet ready for use at the time of the Empire's fall in September 1870. That role of the Louvre disappeared following the end of the French monarchy in 1870. As a legacy of the temporary relocation of both assemblies in the
Palace of Versailles in the 1870s, their
joint sessions have been held there ever since, in a room that was purpose-built for that use () and completed in 1875 in the Versailles palace's South Wing.
Royal residence For centuries, the seat of executive power in Paris had been established at the
Palais de la Cité, at or near the spot where
Julian had been proclaimed Roman Emperor back in 360 CE. The political turmoil that followed the death of
Philip IV, however, led to the emergence of rival centers of power in and around Paris, of which the Louvre was one. In 1316
Clementia of Hungary, the widow of recently deceased king
Louis X, spent much of her pregnancy at the
Château de Vincennes but resided at the Louvre when she gave birth to baby King
John I on 15 November 1316, who died five days later. John was thus both the only king of France born at the Louvre, and almost certainly the only one who died there (
Henry IV is now generally believed to have died before his carriage arrived at the Louvre following his fatal stabbing in the
rue de la Ferronnerie on 14 May 1610).
Philip VI occasionally resided at the Louvre, as documented by some of his letters in mid-1328. King
John II is also likely to have resided at the Louvre in 1347, since his daughter
Joan of Valois was betrothed there to Henry of Brabant on 21 June 1347, and his short-lived daughter Marguerite was born at the Louvre on 20 September 1347.
Charles V of France, who had survived the invasion of the Cité by
Étienne Marcel's partisans in 1358, decided that a less central location would be preferable for his safety. In 1360 he initiated the construction of the
Hôtel Saint-Pol, which became his main place of residence in Paris. Upon becoming king in 1364, he started transforming the Louvre into a permanent and more majestic royal residence, even though he stayed there less often than at the Hôtel Saint-Pol. After Charles V's death, his successor
Charles VI also mainly stayed at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, but as he was incapacitated by mental illness, his wife
Isabeau of Bavaria resided in the Louvre and ruled from there. Later 15th-century kings did not reside in the Louvre, nor did either
Francis I or
Henry II even as they partly converted the Louvre as a Renaissance palace. The royal family only came back to reside in the newly rebuilt complex following
Catherine de' Medici's abandonment of the
Hôtel des Tournelles after her husband Henry II's traumatic death there in July 1559. From then, the king and court would stay mainly in the Louvre between 1559 and 1588 when
Henry III escaped Paris, then between 1594 and 1610 under
Henry IV. Beyond his minority,
Louis XIII did not much reside in the Louvre and preferred the suburban residences of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye (where
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638, and where
Louis XIII himself died on 14 May 1643) and
Fontainebleau (where Louis XIII had been born on 27 September 1601). Louis XIV stayed away from the Louvre during
the Fronde between 1643 and 1652, and departed from there following the death of his mother in 1666.
Louis XV only briefly resided in the Louvre's in 1719, as the
Tuileries were undergoing refurbishment. Both
Louis XIV in the 1660s and
Napoleon in the 1810s made plans to establish their main residence in the
Colonnade Wing, but none of these respective projects came to fruition. Napoleon's attempt led to
Percier and Fontaine's creation of the two monumental staircase on both ends of the wing, but was abandoned in February 1812.
Library pictured with a precious book, miniature of
John of Salisbury's
Policraticus, 1372
Charles V was renowned for his interest in books (thus his moniker "" which translates as "learned" as well as "wise"), and in 1368 established a library of about 900 volumes on three levels inside the northwestern tower of the Louvre, then renamed from to . The next year he appointed , one of his officials, as the librarian. This action has been widely viewed as foundational, transitioning from the kings' prior practice of keeping books as individual objects to organizing a collection with proper cataloguing; as such, Charles V's library is generally considered a precursor to the
French National Library, even though it was dismantled in the 15th century. Yet another library, the (BCMN), was gradually developed by the curators, mainly during the 20th century, and located on half of the attic of the Cour Carrée's southern wing, on the river-facing side. The transfer of its collections to the new
Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art was planned in the 1990s Several smaller libraries remain in the Louvre: a in the BCMN's former spaces, open to the public; a specialized scholarly library on art of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, located on the and thus known as the ; and two other specialized libraries, respectively on painting in the and decorative arts in the .
Ceremonial venue displayed in the Louvre's lower main room on 10–21 June 1610, engraving after a painting by
François Quesnel On the occasion of
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor's visit to Paris in 1377–1378, the main banquet was held at the
Palais de la Cité but the French king used the Louvre's on the next day to give a major speech on his political position in the conflict now known as the
Hundred Years' War. A few years later, minister
André Malraux started a tradition of public ceremonies in the
Cour Carrée to celebrate recently deceased French cultural luminaries. These were held in honor of
Georges Braque on and
Le Corbusier on , with Malraux delivering the
eulogy; of Malraux himself on , with eulogy by prime minister
Raymond Barre; and of
Pierre Soulages on , with eulogy by president
Emmanuel Macron.
Guest residence for foreign sovereigns and royals ,
Villa Farnese. Charles spent his first Parisian night at the
Palais de la Cité and the following five at the Louvre, spruced up for the occasion The Louvre was the Parisian accommodation of the Emperors who came to visit France:
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor stayed there in early 1378;
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor in March and April 1416; and
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor on 2–7 January 1540. In the late 1640s as the royal family had temporarily left the Louvre, Queen
Henrietta Maria of England spent some of her Parisian exile in the apartment of the Queen Mother, on the ground floor of the southern wing of the
Cour Carrée, where in early February 1649 she learned about the execution of her husband
Charles I. In 1717, the was made available to
Peter the Great during his visit in Paris, but the Tsar preferred to stay in the less grandiose . In 1722, the same apartment became the temporary residence of Infanta
Mariana Victoria of Spain, who was promised to marry the young
Louis XV (she then moved to Versailles, and in 1725 returned to Spain following the cancelation of the marriage project). This episode remains in the name of the garden in front of the
Petite Galerie, known since as the . The courtyard on the other side of the wing, previously known as , was also known as the for much of the 18th century (and later , now ). In the 1860s,
Napoleon III decided to create a prestige apartment for visiting sovereigns in the
Aile de Flore, close to his own apartment in the
Tuileries Palace. Lefuel designed it with a monumental , the decoration of which he led between 1873 and 1878 even though the monarchy had fallen in the meantime. That project, however, was left unfinished, and in 1901–1902 its richly decorated upper section was repurposed into a room which is now the study gallery of the Louvre's department of graphical arts.
Court house granting the
Charter of 1814 to grateful France, 1827 painting by
Merry-Joseph Blondel in the , Lemercier Wing The Louvre has traditionally not had much of a judiciary role, since royal justice was strongly associated with the much older
Palais de la Cité, and local judicial functions under the , including torture and incarceration, were mainly located at the
Grand Châtelet. In 1505, as the Châtelet underwent renovation works, its judicial functions were temporarily hosted in the Louvre. Given the castle's prestige it was deemed unsuitable for torture, which was instead carried out during that period in the . Under
Henry IV, the
Parlement of Paris was summoned by the king to hold sessions at the Louvre rather than at its traditional venue of the Palais de la Cité. The Louvre again hosted a judiciary institution when the
Conseil d'État was located there between 1824 and 1832. It was awarded the first floor of the Lemercier Wing On the western side of the
Cour Carrée, and remained there until 1832. The painted ceilings of that era, installed in 1827, are still preserved with allegorical themes related to French history and legislation. The space to the south of the
Lescot Wing's Lower Great Hall (now ), created by
Pierre Lescot in phases between 1546 and the late 1550s and later remodeled, is known as the . This word, however, refers to its architectural setting, providing a monumental stand for the royal family to watch and dominate the functions held in the Great Hall, and not to a judicial role.
Execution site The Louvre was the scene of capital punishment on various occasions. On 4 December 1591,
Charles de Guise had four members of the 16-member
Conseil des Seize hung from the ceiling of the
Lescot Wing's lower main room, now the
Salle des Caryatides. During the
French Revolution between 21 August 1792 and 11 May 1793, the
guillotine was installed on the
Place du Carrousel in front of the
Tuileries Palace. It was relocated to the
Place de la Concorde (then known as ), first on a one-off basis for the
execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793, and then permanently in May of the same year.
Entertainment venue Entertainment performances such as tournaments, games, balls and theater were a core part of court life at the time when the Louvre was a royal residence. On the night of 5 February 1606, a torch-lit carrousel was performed in the Louvre's courtyard between midnight and 5 am, with the monarchs and courtiers watching from their apartments' windows. In 1610, a gladiator-style fight between a man and a lion was organized in the courtyard, which King Henry IV also watched from inside the building. In February 1625 and 1626 respectively, two major ballets
burlesques directed by
Daniel Rabel were performed in the Louvre's Lower Great Room (now ), with
Louis XIII himself appearing as one of the dancers. Theatrical representations were particularly significant in the period following the return of the court to the Louvre in 1652.
Molière first performed in front of the king in the large first-floor room of the
Lescot Wing on 24 October 1658, playing his and . Following that performance's success, he was granted use of a space first in the
Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon and then, after the latter's demolition to make space for the
Louvre Colonnade, at the
Palais-Royal. Molière again performed at the Louvre on 29 January 1664 when he directed , with
Louis XIV himself playing a cameo role as an Egyptian, in the main room of the Queen Mother on the ground floor of the Cour Carrée's southern wing. On 17 November 1667,
Jean Racine's was created at the Louvre in Louis XIV's presence. Some lavish entertainment performances left such a mark on collective memory that parts of the Louvre came to be named after them. Thus, the
Place du Carrousel preserves the memory of the of 5–6 June 1662, and the
Pavillon de Flore is named after the that was first performed there on 13 February 1669.
Napoleon decided to build a new venue for the
Paris Opera as part of his project to complete the Louvre and its reunion with the Tuileries. In 1810
Percier and Fontaine planned a new opera house north of what is now the
Cour Napoléon, on a similar footprint to the present-day , with main entrance on the northern side facing the
Palais-Royal. That project, however, was not implemented. Nor was
Napoleon III's plan in the 1860s to build a large theater room in the
Aile de Marsan as a symmetrical counterpart to the he created in the southern
Aile de Flore. In the 1960s, a theater appears to have operated in the
Pavillon de Marsan, known as the .
Samuel Beckett's play named
Play () had its French premiere there on 11 June 1964, directed by
Jean-Marie Serreau. In 1996, the
Comédie-Française opened the in the underground spaces of the
Carrousel du Louvre, its third venue (after its main
Palais-Royal facility and the
Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier).
Residence of artists and craftsmen On 22 December 1608, Henry IV published
letters patent heralding his decision to invite hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work on the floors under the
Grande Galerie. Simultaneously, Henry established a tapestry factory there, which remained until its transfer to the
Gobelins Manufactory in 1671. Creators who lived under the Grande Galerie in the 17th and 18th centuries included
Louis Le Vau,
Théophraste Renaudot from 1648 to 1653,
André Charles Boulle,
Jean-Baptiste Pigalle,
Augustin Pajou,
Maurice Quentin de La Tour,
Claude-Joseph Vernet,
Carle Vernet,
Horace Vernet (who was born there),
Jean-Baptiste Greuze,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and
Hubert Robert. Following the departure of the royal court to Versailles in the 1670s, a number of individuals, many of which were artists, obtained the privilege to establish their residence in parts of the formerly royal palace. These included
Jacques-Louis David in the southeastern corner of the
Cour Carrée and
Charles-André van Loo in the
Galerie d'Apollon. On 20 August 1801,
Napoleon had the artists and others who lived in the Cour Carrée all expelled, and in 1806 put a final end to the creators' lodgings under the Grande Galerie.
Royal mint by
Jean Varin (1666), made at the Louvre mint In July 1609,
Henry IV transferred the
mint to a space the
Grande Galerie, from its previous location on the
Île de la Cité. The Louvre mint specialized in the production of medals, tokens and commemorative coins, and was correspondingly known as the , whereas common coin kept being produced at the on behind
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois as had been the case since the 13th century. The Louvre's medals mint was led by prominent artists that included
Guillaume Dupré,
Jean Varin, and . It closed during the
French Revolution but was revived in 1804 by
Vivant Denon. By imperial decree of 5 March 1806, it was relocated from the Louvre to the
Hôtel des Monnaies where the had moved in 1775.
Residence of senior courtiers and officials In the 17th century, the second floor of the
Pavillon du Roi was the home of
Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes until 1621, then of
Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and from 1652 of
Cardinal Mazarin who also established his nieces in the second-floor attic of the
Lescot Wing..
Nicolas Fouquet and his successor
Jean-Baptiste Colbert similarly lived on the upper floors of the
Pavillon du Roi, above the King's bedchamber. New prestige apartments for regime dignitaries were created as part of
Napoleon III's Louvre expansion. The main one, in the North (Richelieu) Wing, became the apartment of the Finance Minister after 1871, and as such featured prominently in
Raymond Depardon's documentary '''', shot during the presidential election campaign of then minister
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in early 1974. The apartment was renovated in the early 1990s and is now a part of the Louvre's decorative arts department, known as . Another official apartment was created for the imperial "Great
Equerry" () , in the South (Denon) Wing, with entrance through an ornate portico in the . Part of that large apartment was converted in the 1990s into the museum's exhibition space for northern European sculpture, while another part has been used since 1912 as offices for the Louvre's director and their staff. Lefuel also created two successive apartments for the Louvre's director
Émilien de Nieuwerkerke, the first in former rooms of the
Académie de peinture, and when these had to be demolished to build the
Escalier Daru, on the first floor of the
Cour Carrée's northern wing. Several
tied cottages still exist in the
Pavillon de Flore, including one for the museum's Director. Other apartments in the same pavilion are reserved for senior personnel tasked with the museum's security and maintenance, so that they stay close in case their presence is needed for an emergency.
National printing house A first printing workshop appeared in the Louvre in the 1620s. In 1640, superintendent
François Sublet de Noyers established it as a royal printing house, the , putting an end to the monarchy's prior practice of subcontracting its printing tasks to individual entrepreneurs such as
Robert Estienne. The royal printing house, soon known as , was first led by and his descendants, then by members of the throughout the 18th century until 1792. It was relocated to the
Hôtel de Toulouse in 1795, then the in 1809. In the early 1850s in the early stages of
Napoleon III's Louvre expansion, projects were made to relocate the national printing house (then known as ) in the new building of the Louvre, now the Richelieu Wing. These plans were criticized by
Ludovic Vitet among others, and were not implemented.
Academic and educational facility in the , 24 October 1795 , after renovation in 2014 In the late 17th century, the Louvre started to become the seat of the French royal academies. First, in 1672 Colbert allowed the
Académie Française to meet on the ground floor of the
Pavillon du Roi, in the Guards' Room of the former Queen Mother's apartment. Soon the Académie moved to the ground floor of the Lemercier Wing on the Cour Carrée, and also maintained its library there. The
Académie des Inscriptions joined it in nearby rooms. The
Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture had been established in the Grande Galerie until 1661, and returned to the Louvre in 1692, establishing itself in the
Salon Carré and the nearby wing built by Le Vau on the , next to the where a number of the king's paintings were kept. The
Académie royale d'architecture moved to the Queen's apartment (in the southern wing of the Cour Carrée) in 1692. After a fire in 1740 it moved to the ground floor of the north wing. The
Académie des Sciences also moved to the Louvre in the 1690s, and in 1699 moved from the ground-floor to the former king's room, namely the , the (antechamber) and the former (now which was partitioned at that time. The , a diplomats' training school, took over in the 1710s the large room on the third floor of the
Pavillon de l'Horloge (now partitioned into offices). From 1725, the
Salon Carré, recently vacated with the return to Spain of the child Mariana Victoria, was used by the
Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture for its yearly exhibition, which took from it its name of
Salon. From 1763, the Académie also overtook the
Galerie d'Apollon. During the
French Revolution, all academies were deemed to be fatally tainted by the
Ancien régime associations and terminated on 8 August 1793. Barely more than two years later, however, they were recreated as the
Institut de France on 24 October 1795, ceremonially inaugurated in the
Lescot Wing's ground-floor room (the Louvre's ) on 4 April 1796. On 20 March 1805
Napoleon decided to relocate the Institut from the Louvre to its current seat at the former
Collège des Quatre-Nations, which had been closed in 1791. The
Salon restarted on a yearly basis in the Salon Carré, until the
Revolution of 1848. That year, the Louvre's energetic new director
Philippe-Auguste Jeanron had it relocated to the
Tuileries, so that the Salon Carré could be fully devoted to the museum's permanent exhibition. From 1857 the salon moved on from there to the newly built
Palais de l'Industrie. The
École du Louvre was created in 1882 with the mission to "extract from the collections the knowledge they contain, and to train curators, missionaries and excavators". The school's curriculum originally focused on
archaeology but soon expanded to related disciplines, such as
art history and
museography. In the early years, the school's sessions were held in the in two rooms of the former apartment of the great equerry, with entrance from the quayside. A large underground classroom, the named after art historian and Louvre curator
Louis Courajod, was built in 1932 on architect Albert Ferran's design under the . It was replaced in the 1990s by the still larger , also underground on the northern end of the
Carrousel du Louvre. The former was then transformed into exhibition rooms in which the Louvre's
Coptic art collection is now displayed, including the architectonic pieces from
Bawit.
Museum Securities exchange The
national securities exchange (or ) was located at the Louvre between 10 May 1795 and 9 September 1795, in Anne of Austria's former summer apartment on the ground floor of the Petite Galerie. This followed nearly two years of closure during which off-exchange speculation on
Assignats went wild, after decades of operation of the Bourse in the
Hôtel de Nevers from 24 September 1724 to 27 June 1793. In September 1795 the Bourse again closed for a few months; it reopened in January 1796 in the
Church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires where it stayed until 1807.
Administrative office building During the
Ancien Régime, administrative staff numbers in the machinery of government remained small and were dwarfed by the number of courtiers and domestic servants. That changed in the 19th century as the administrative arms of the state became increasingly significant, and the Louvre as a quintessential government building reflected that new reality. The installation of the
Conseil d'État in the Lemercier Wing between 1824 and 1832 was a first step, since that body has administrative as well as judiciary competencies. The office footprint within the Louvre increased considerably with
Napoleon III's expansion. The new North (Richelieu) Wing included offices for use by various ministries: • Plans were made for the short-lived (1858–1860) to be located in the and the adjacent wing to the west, but that department was terminated before the office space was made available; • Plans were also made to locate the Directorate of Telegraphs and relocate the
national printing office in the northern wing, but were not implemented. • Most of the northern wing was used by the , including the prestige apartment for the minister; and located in the spaces previously reserved for the Algeria Ministry; Under the
Government of National Defense formed on , the Fine Arts administration relocated to the under the
Ministry of Public Instruction, where it remained until the formation of the
Ministry of Culture in 1959. On 29 May 1871, a mere few days after the Tuileries' fire, France's government head
Adolphe Thiers attributed all administrative offices and barracks space in the Louvre's northern wing to the
French Finance Ministry, whose buildings further west on the
rue de Rivoli had been entirely destroyed. The Finance Ministry remained there for more than a century, until the late 1980s. A meeting of finance ministers of the
Group of Seven countries, hosted at the Louvre on 22 February 1987, gave its name to the
Louvre Accord. Further west, projects were made in the 1880s to relocate the
National Court of Audit () – whose previous offices in the
Palais d'Orsay, where the
Musée d'Orsay now stands, had also been burned down – in the which had just been reconstructed and expanded by Lefuel. Only archives of the Court were deposited there in 1884, however, The museum then planned to expand into the Flore Wing but that was thwarted during
World War I as the facility was used by the wartime bond issuance service. The Finance Ministry, together with the it created in 1933, remained there and stayed until 1961. The Louvre museum itself keeps offices in various parts of the building, e.g. in the former apartment of the Great Equerry (museum direction), on the top floors of the
Pavillon de l'Horloge, While in the Louvre the Municipal Council's meetings were held in Napoleon III's unfinished of the , from 1878 to 1883. The left the Louvre in 1887 to its current City Hall location. The offices of the Prefecture and apartment of Préfet
Eugène Poubelle remained in the Pavillon de Flore until 1893, when they were replaced by the Ministry of Colonies, despite an 1883 order () that had transferred the entire to the museum.
Sculpture garden 's
Duke of Orléans, placed in 1845 in the
Cour Carrée and now at
Château d'Eu 's
Meissonier, placed in 1895 in the , now in Poissy While the Louvre is rich with
architectural sculpture, its position in the midst of a bustling city neighborhood was long unfavorable to the display of freestanding sculpture, with few exceptions that included the temporary display of a colossal statue of
Vulcan in the Louvre's courtyard during
Charles V's visit in 1540. but was not implemented. Instead, on 28 October 1845 an equestrian statue of
Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans was placed on that spot, itself a second cast of a monument by
Carlo Marochetti erected in
Algiers earlier that year. But that did not last long, and the statue was relocated to Versailles shortly after the
Revolution of 1848 (it was moved again in 1971 to its present location at the
Château d'Eu). In the early
Second Empire, plans were made to erect equestrian statues of
Francis I in the Cour Carrée and
Charlemagne and
Napoleon respectively in the two squares of the
Cour Napoléon. A plaster model of
Auguste Clésinger's equestrian Francis I was placed in the Cour Carrée between December 1855 to February 1856, when it was transferred to
the Crystal Palace on
Sydenham Hill in London. On 15 January 1863 Clésinger was also tasked to create the statue of Charlemagne, on which he worked until 1871. The statue of Napoleon was commissioned on 26 August 1862 from then-prominent sculptor
Eugène Guillaume, who apparently only produced several small-scale models. Sculpted monuments mushroomed around the Louvre in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of them were removed in 1933 on the initiative of Education Minister
Anatole de Monzie, due to changing tastes: • Marble monument to
François Boucher by
Jean-Paul Aubé (1890), in the , removed in 1933 and now at the Municipal Museum in
Longwy • Equestrian statue of
Diego Velázquez by
Emmanuel Frémiet (1892), in the , relocated in 1933 to the
Casa de Velázquez in Madrid and destroyed during the
Spanish Civil War • Marble version of the group titled , a celebration of the resistance of
Belfort during the
Franco-Prussian War by
Antonin Mercié, installed in 1894 in the
Carrousel Garden, removed in 1933 and now at
Fort Mont-Valérien • Marble statue of
Ernest Meissonier by
Antonin Mercié (1895), in the , removed in 1966 and relocated in 1980 in the at
Poissy • Monument to
Auguste Raffet by
Emmanuel Frémiet (1896), in the , bronze parts melted in the early 1940s during the
German occupation, the rest removed in 1966 • Bronze statue of
Jean-Léon Gérôme sculpting his
Gladiators, by
Aimé Morot (1909), in the , removed in 1967 and now at the
Musée d'Orsay • Marble statue of
Paris during the War 1914–1918 by
Albert Bartholomé (1921), removed in 1933 and kept in a damaged state in the
Bois de Vincennes In 1907 , then an undersecratary of state in charge of France's fine arts policy, fostered the creation of a sculpture garden in the western octagonal garden of the
Cour Napoléon, dubbed the "campo santo". The monumental bronze group ''Le Temps et le Génie de l'Art'' by
Victor Ségoffin was placed in the center in 1908. Around it were allegorical and commemorative sculptures: •
The sons of Cain, bronze by
Paul Landowski (1906), now in the
Tuileries Garden •
Architecture,
Côte-d'Or stone, also by Landowski (1908), since 1933 on in
Reims, •
Painting, marble by (1909), now at the in
Le Mans •
Pierre de Montreuil, marble by
Henri Bouchard (1909), since 1935 in a public garden next to the
Basilica of Saint-Denis •
Michel Colombe, bronze by
Jean Boucher (1909), moved to Tours in 1933 and melted in 1942 •
Corot, marble by
François-Raoul Larche (1908), since 1935 in
Ville-d'Avray Two more memorials, of
François Rude by Sicard and
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin by Larche, were commissioned but not completed. Landowski's
Sons of Cain was eventually moved in 1984 to its current location on the of the
Tuileries Garden. In the eastern octagonal garden, an , by
Paul Wayland Bartlett, was erected in 1908. This initiative had been sponsored in 1899 by American diplomat Robert John Thompson in gratitude of the French gift of the
Statue of Liberty, and originally intended for a dedication at
Lafayette's grave at the
Picpus Cemetery during the
Exposition Universelle (1900). In preparation for the
Grand Louvre remodeling, the Lafayette monument was moved in 1985 to its current location on the
Cours-la-Reine. In 1964, Culture Minister
André Malraux decided to install in the
Carrousel Garden 21 bronze sculptures by
Aristide Maillol which had been donated to the French state by the sculptor's former model and muse,
Dina Vierny, including casts of
Air,
Action in Chains,
The Mountain, and
The River. The Maillol statues were rearranged during the overhaul of the garden in the 1990s. Most recently, as part of the Grand Louvre project designed by
I. M. Pei, a cast made in lead in 1986 of the marble
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini has been placed in the
Cour Napoléon, in front of the
Louvre Pyramid and marking the end of Paris's . This was intended as a tribute to Bernini's past role as architect of the Louvre in 1664–1666, even though his plans were not executed. File:Bain News Service, Statue of Lafayette in the courtyard of the Louvre, Paris, France - Library of Congress.tif |Lafayette Monument in the Cour Napoléon, early 20th century File:Paul Landowski - Die Söhne Kains 1900 - Paris, Cour du Carrousel 1968.jpg |Landowski's
Sons of Cain in the Cour Napoléon, 1968 File:Les Trois Grâces by Aristide Maillol (Tuileries) 11.jpg|Maillol's
Les Trois Grâces File:L'Air by Aristide Maillol, Tuileries garden, Paris 11 August 2015.jpg|Maillol's ''L'Air'' File:Jardin du Carrousel du Louvre.jpg|Maillol's
Ile-de-France File:Monument aux morts de Port-Vendres by Aristide Maillol (Tuileries) 02.jpg|Maillol's
Monument aux morts de Port-Vendres File:Louis XIV Bernin réplique Cour Napoléon Louvre.jpg|Bernini's
Louis XIV in the Cour Napoléon
Research facility , located under the
Cour du Carrousel The was created in 1932 to support research on paintings and leverage new analysis techniques. In 1968 it became the , with a national mandate but still located at the Louvre. In 1998, this laboratory merged with the to form the
Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF), located in the
Pavillon de Flore.
Dining and shopping venue , photographed in 2010 The Louvre Palace is host to several restaurants and cafés. As of 2021, the most prominent is the , opened in 1994 in the Richelieu Wing with a terrace on the
Cour Napoléon, named after the Louvre's nearby and designed by It was created by restaurateur on a
concession contract from the museum. Inside the museum are the , opened in 1993 and designed by and
Daniel Buren, and , redesigned in 2016 by Mathieu Lehanneur; the intimate that had opened in 1998 on a quiet corner of the closed in the 2010s. Close to the Louvre Palace's northwestern tip, the restaurant opened in 2016 in the
Aile de Marsan with a terrace on the
Carrousel Garden, designed by
Joseph Dirand and replacing a previous restaurant on the same spot, . A high-end restaurant named opened in 1989 on the mezzanine of the Hall Napoléon, under the
Louvre Pyramid, and was operated by chef Yves Pinard; its inaugural event was the dinner of the
15th G7 summit. The underground
Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall is home to fast food outlets grouped in one of the first
food courts in Paris, opened in 1993 and rebranded in 2009 as . From 1608 to 1806, the ground floor of the
Grande Galerie hosted a number of shops in which artists and artisans peddled their creations. They were closed by order of
Napoleon. Aside from museum shops, the Louvre experienced a revival of retail commercial activity with the opening in 1993 of the
Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall, whose largest slot was initially leased by a
Virgin Megastore until 2012, and by
Printemps since 2014. France's first
Apple Store was also located there and operated from 2009 to 2018. ==Chronological plan of the construction of the Louvre==