Before the museum The Louvre Palace, which houses the museum, was begun by
King Philip II in the late 12th century to protect the city from the attack from the west, as the
Kingdom of England still held
Normandy at the time. Remnants of the
Medieval Louvre are still visible in the crypt. Whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, and it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. In the 7th century,
Burgundofara (also known as Saint Fare), abbess in Meaux, is said to have given part of her "Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris" to a monastery, even though it is doubtful that this land corresponded exactly to the present site of the Louvre. However, linguistically it would be sounder to derive the word from the French verb
louer (to let, rent), with the Old French noun-building suffix
-re appended (like in
oeuvre,
genre,
ogre,
bougre etc.), signifying something which is let or rented. According to DuCange's medieval Latin glossary,
louvagium in medieval France was a kind of fee or rent paid for the use of something. The Louvre Palace has been subject to numerous renovations since its construction. In the 14th century,
Charles V converted the building from its military role into a residence. In 1546,
Francis I started its rebuilding in
French Renaissance style. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, construction works slowed to a halt. The royal move away from Paris resulted in the Louvre being used as a residence for artists, under Royal patronage. For example, four generations of craftsmen-artists from the Boulle family were granted Royal patronage and resided in the Louvre. Meanwhile, the collections of the Louvre originated in the acquisitions of paintings and other artworks by the monarchs of the
House of France. At the
Palace of Fontainebleau, Francis collected art that would later be part of the Louvre's art collections, including
Leonardo da Vinci's
Mona Lisa. By the mid-18th century there were proposals to create a public gallery in the Louvre. Art critic
Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne in 1747 published a call for a display of the royal collection. On 14 October 1750,
Louis XV decided on a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the
Luxembourg Palace. A hall was opened by
Le Normant de Tournehem and the
Marquis de Marigny for public viewing of the "king's paintings" (
Tableaux du Roy) on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Luxembourg gallery included
Andrea del Sarto's
Charity and works by
Raphael;
Titian;
Veronese;
Rembrandt;
Poussin or
Van Dyck. It closed in 1780 as a result of the royal gift of the Luxembourg palace to the Count of Provence (the future king,
Louis XVIII) by the king in 1778. The
comte d'Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed to convert the of the Louvre – which at that time contained the
plans-reliefs or 3D models of key fortified sites in and around France – into the "French Museum". Many design proposals were offered for the Louvre's renovation into a museum, without a final decision being made on them. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution. 's ''
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss'' was commissioned in 1787 and donated in 1824. The museum opened on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise, as
Muséum central des Arts de la République. The public was given free access on three days per week, which was "perceived as a major accomplishment and was generally appreciated". The collection showcased 537 paintings and 184 objects of art. Three-quarters were derived from the royal collections, the remainder from confiscated
émigrés and
Church property (
biens nationaux). In 1794, France's revolutionary armies began bringing pieces from Northern Europe, augmented after the
Treaty of Tolentino (1797) by works from the Vatican, such as the
Laocoön and
Apollo Belvedere, to establish the Louvre as a museum and as a "sign of popular sovereignty".
Bertrand Clauzel then chief of staff to
Emmanuel de Grouchy, serving in the
Army of Italy, negotiated the
abdication of the
King of Sardinia in December 1798 from his mainland territories. To secure the agreement Clauzel returned with
the Woman with Dropsy, a painting by the Dutch master
Gerard Dou. Clauzel would donate it to the Louvre, making it the first donation in the museum's history. The early days were hectic. Privileged artists continued to live in residence, and the unlabelled paintings hung "frame to frame from floor to ceiling". The museum closed in May 1796 due to structural deficiencies. It reopened on
14 July 1801, arranged chronologically and with new lighting and columns. On Denon's suggestion in July 1803, the museum itself was renamed
Musée Napoléon. The collection grew through successful military campaigns. Acquisitions were made of Spanish, Austrian, Dutch, and Italian works, either as the result of
war looting or formalised by treaties such as the
Treaty of Tolentino. The
Horses of Saint Mark, which had adorned the basilica of San Marco in Venice after the sack of
Constantinople in 1204, were brought to Paris where they were placed atop Napoleon's
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in 1797. whereas the Tiber has remained in the Louvre to this day.) The despoilment of Italian churches and palaces outraged the Italians and their artistic and cultural sensibilities. After the French defeat at
Waterloo, the looted works' former owners sought their return. The Louvre's administrator, Denon, was loath to comply in absence of a treaty of restitution. In response, foreign states sent emissaries to London to seek help, and many pieces were returned, though far from all. In 1815
Louis XVIII finally concluded agreements with the
Austrian government for the keeping of works such as Veronese's
Wedding at Cana which was exchanged for a large
Le Brun or the repurchase of the
Albani collection.
From 1815 to 1852 '' was added to the Louvre's collection during the reign of
Louis XVIII. For most of the 19th century, from
Napoleon's time to the
Second Empire, the Louvre and other national museums were managed under the monarch's
civil list and thus depended much on the ruler's personal involvement. Whereas the most iconic collection remained that of paintings in the , a number of other initiatives mushroomed in the vast building, named as if they were separate museums even though they were generally managed under the same administrative umbrella. Correspondingly, the museum complex was often referred to in the plural ("") rather than singular. During the
Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830),
Louis XVIII and
Charles X added to the collections. The Greek and Roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor of the southwestern side of the
Cour Carrée was completed on designs by
Percier and Fontaine. In 1819 an exhibition of manufactured products was opened in the first floor of the Cour Carrée's southern wing and would stay there until the mid-1820s. Charles X in 1826 created the and in 1827 included it in his broader , a new section of the museum complex located in a suite of lavishly decorated rooms on the first floor of the South Wing of the Cour Carrée. The Egyptian collection, initially curated by
Jean-François Champollion, formed the basis for what is now the Louvre's
Department of Egyptian Antiquities. It was formed from the purchased collections of
Edmé-Antoine Durand,
Henry Salt and the second collection of
Bernardino Drovetti (the first one having been purchased by
Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia to form the core of the present
Museo Egizio in
Turin). The Restoration period also saw the opening in 1824 of the , a section of largely French sculptures on the ground floor of the Northwestern side of the Cour Carrée, many of whose artifacts came from the
Palace of Versailles and from Alexandre Lenoir's
Musée des Monuments Français following its closure in 1816. Meanwhile, the
French Navy created an exhibition of ship models in the Louvre in December 1827, initially named in honour of
Dauphin Louis Antoine, building on an 18th-century initiative of
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. This collection, renamed in 1833 and later to develop into the
Musée national de la Marine, was initially located on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's North Wing, and in 1838 moved up one level to the 2nd-floor
attic, where it remained for more than a century. File:Dernière salle des antiquités égyptiennes (Louvre).jpg|First room File:Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre - Room 27 and others.jpg|Room 27 File:Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre - Room 29 D201903.jpg|Room 29 File:Salles des colonnes du Louvre, vue vers l'ouest.jpg|Salle des Colonnes File:Greek antiquities in the Louvre - Room 35 D201903.jpg|Room 35 File:Room 36 of the Greek antiquities in the Louvre.jpg|Room 36 File:Greek antiquities in the Louvre - Room 38 D201903.jpg|Room 38 , painted by
Giuseppe Castiglione in 1861 following its repurposing of the late 1840s
Veronese's
Wedding at Cana is visible on the left, and his
Supper in the House of Simon (now at the
Palace of Versailles) is on the right. Following the
July Revolution,
King Louis Philippe focused his interest on the repurposing of the
Palace of Versailles into a
Museum of French History conceived as a project of national reconciliation, and the Louvre was kept in comparative neglect. Louis-Philippe did, however, sponsor the creation of the to host the monumental
Assyrian sculpture works brought to Paris by
Paul-Émile Botta, in the ground-floor gallery north of the eastern entrance of the Cour Carrée. The Assyrian Museum opened on 1 May 1847. Separately, Louis-Philippe had his
Spanish gallery displayed in the Louvre from 7 January 1838, in five rooms on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's East (
Colonnade) Wing, but the collection remained his personal property. As a consequence, the works were removed after Louis-Philippe was deposed in 1848, and were eventually auctioned away in 1853. The short-lived
Second Republic had more ambitions for the Louvre. It initiated repair work, the completion of the
Galerie d'Apollon and of the , and the overhaul of the (former site of the iconic yearly
Salon) and of the Grande Galerie. In 1848, the Naval Museum in the Cour Carrée's attic was brought under the common Louvre Museum management,
Second Empire The rule of
Napoleon III was transformational for the Louvre, both the building and the museum. In 1852, he created the
Musée des Souverains in the
Colonnade Wing, an ideological project aimed at buttressing his personal legitimacy. In 1861, he bought 11,835 artworks including 641 paintings, Greek gold and other antiquities of the
Campana collection. For its display, he created another new section within the Louvre named , occupying a number of rooms in various parts of the building. Between 1852 and 1870, the museum added 20,000 new artefacts to its collections. The main change of that period was to the building itself. In the 1850s architects
Louis Visconti and
Hector Lefuel created massive new spaces around what is now called the
Cour Napoléon, some of which (in the South Wing, now Aile Denon) went to the museum. In the 1860s, Lefuel also led the creation of the with a new closer to Napoleon III's residence in the
Tuileries Palace, with the effect of shortening the by about a third of its previous length. A smaller but significant Second Empire project was the decoration of the below the
Salon carré. File:Musée Napoléon III.jpg|Entrance to a section of the
Musée Napoléon III from the
salle des séances, then a double-height space File:Galerie Daru - Musée du Louvre.jpg|
Galerie Daru, part of the New Louvre building program under Napoleon III File:Paris - Musée du Louvre (30612872064).jpg|
Salle Daru above the
galerie Daru, also created under Napoleon III File:Escalier Mollien in 2010 (1).jpg|
Escalier Mollien in the New Louvre File:P1080712 Louvre salle romaine rwk.JPG|
Salle des Empereurs From 1870 to 1981 The Louvre narrowly escaped serious damage during the suppression of the
Paris Commune. On 23 May 1871, as the French Army advanced into Paris, a force of
Communards led by set fire to the adjoining
Tuileries Palace. The fire burned for forty-eight hours, entirely destroying the interior of the Tuileries and spreading to the north west wing of the museum next to it. The emperor's Louvre library (
Bibliothèque du Louvre) and some of the adjoining halls, in what is now the Richelieu Wing, were separately destroyed. But the museum was saved by the efforts of Paris firemen and museum employees led by curator
Henry Barbet de Jouy. Following the end of the monarchy, several spaces in the Louvre's South Wing went to the museum. The Salle du Manège was transferred to the museum in 1879, and in 1928 became its main entrance lobby. The large Salle des Etats that had been created by Lefuel between the and Pavillon Denon was redecorated in 1886 by , Lefuel's successor as architect of the Louvre, and opened as a spacious exhibition room. Edomond Guillaume also decorated the first-floor room at the northwest corner of the
Cour Carrée, on the ceiling of which he placed in 1890 a monumental painting by
Carolus-Duran, ''The Triumph of
Marie de' Medici'' originally created in 1879 for the
Luxembourg Palace. The Musée de Marine itself was relocated to the
Palais de Chaillot in 1943. The Louvre's extensive collections of
Asian art were moved to the
Guimet Museum in 1945. Nevertheless, the Louvre's first gallery of
Islamic art opened in 1893. is seen with a plaster model of the
Venus de Milo, while visiting the Louvre with the curator Alfred Merlin on 7 October 1940. in the late 1960s, , with "dos-à-dos" seat designed in 1967 by
Pierre Paulin In the late 1920s, Louvre Director
Henri Verne devised a master plan for the rationalisation of the museum's exhibitions, which was partly implemented in the following decade. In 1932–1934, Louvre architects and Albert Ferran redesigned the
Escalier Daru to its current appearance. The in the South Wing was covered by a glass roof in 1934. Decorative arts exhibits were expanded in the first floor of the North Wing of the
Cour Carrée, including some of France's first
period room displays. In the late 1930s, The La Caze donation was moved to a remodelled above the , with reduced height to create more rooms on the second floor and a sober interior design by Albert Ferran. During
World War II, the Louvre conducted an elaborate plan of
evacuation of its art collection. When Germany occupied the
Sudetenland, many important artworks such as the
Mona Lisa were temporarily moved to the
Château de Chambord. When war was formally declared a year later, most of the museum's paintings were sent there as well. Select sculptures such as
Winged Victory of Samothrace and the
Venus de Milo were sent to the
Château de Valençay. On 27 August 1939, after two days of packing, truck convoys began to leave Paris. By 28 December, the museum was cleared of most works, except those that were too heavy and "unimportant paintings [that] were left in the basement". In early 1945, after the liberation of France, art began returning to the Louvre. New arrangements after the war revealed the further evolution of taste away from the lavish decorative practices of the late 19th century. In 1947, Edmond Guillaume's ceiling ornaments were removed from the , Around 1950, Louvre architect streamlined the interior decoration of the . In the late 1960s, seats designed by
Pierre Paulin were installed in the . In 1972, the 's museography was remade with lighting from a hung tubular case, designed by Louvre architect with assistance from designers ,
Joseph-André Motte and Paulin. In 1961, the Finance Ministry accepted to leave the
Pavillon de Flore at the southwestern end of the Louvre building, as Verne had recommended in his 1920s plan. New exhibition spaces of sculptures (ground floor) and paintings (first floor) opened there later in the 1960s, on a design by government architect Olivier Lahalle.
Grand Louvre In 1981, French President
François Mitterrand proposed, as one of his
Grands Projets, the Grand Louvre plan to relocate the
Finance Ministry, until then housed in the North Wing of the Louvre, and thus devote almost the entire Louvre building (except its northwestern tip, which houses the separate
Musée des Arts Décoratifs) to the museum which would be correspondingly restructured. In 1984
I. M. Pei, the architect personally selected by Mitterrand, proposed a master plan including an underground entrance space accessed through a
glass pyramid in the Louvre's central
Cour Napoléon. The open spaces surrounding the pyramid were inaugurated on 15 October 1988, and its underground lobby was opened on 30 March 1989. New galleries of early modern French paintings on the 2nd floor of the
Cour Carrée, for which the planning had started before the
Grand Louvre, also opened in 1989. Further rooms in the same sequence, designed by
Italo Rota, opened on 15 December 1992. On 18 November 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated the next major phase of the Grand Louvre plan: the renovated North (Richelieu) Wing in the former Finance Ministry site, the museum's largest single expansion in its entire history, designed by Pei, his French associate Michel Macary, and
Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Further underground spaces known as the
Carrousel du Louvre, centred on the
Inverted Pyramid and designed by Pei and Macary, had opened in October 1993. Other refurbished galleries, of Italian sculptures and Egyptian antiquities, opened in 1994. The third and last main phase of the plan unfolded mainly in 1997, with new renovated rooms in the Sully and Denon wings. A new entrance at the
porte des Lions opened in 1998, leading on the first floor to new rooms of Spanish paintings. As of 2002, the Louvre's visitor count had doubled from its pre-Grand-Louvre levels. File:Louvre Courtyard, Looking West.jpg|The Napoleon Courtyard and Ieoh Ming Pei's
pyramid in its centre, at dusk File:Paris July 2011-27a.jpg|The Louvre Palace and the pyramid (by day)
21st century President
Jacques Chirac, who had succeeded Mitterrand in 1995, insisted on the return of non-Western art to the Louvre, upon a recommendation from his friend the art collector and dealer . On his initiative, a selection of highlights from the collections of what would become the
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac was installed on the ground floor of the and opened in 2000, six years ahead of the Musée du Quai Branly itself. The main other initiative in the aftermath of the Grand Louvre project was Chirac's decision to create a new department of Islamic Art, by executive order of 1 August 2003, and to move the corresponding collections from their prior underground location in the Richelieu Wing to a more prominent site in the Denon Wing. That new section opened on 22 September 2012, together with collections from the Roman-era Eastern Mediterranean, with financial support from the
Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation and on a design by
Mario Bellini and
Rudy Ricciotti. In 2007, German painter
Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work for the North stairs of the
Perrault Colonnade,
Athanor. This decision announces the museum's reengagement with contemporary art under the direction of
Henri Loyrette, fifty years after the institution's last order to a contemporary artists,
George Braque. In 2010, American painter
Cy Twombly completed a new ceiling for the (the former ), a counterpoint to that of Braque installed in 1953 in the adjacent . The room's floor and walls were redesigned in 2021 by Louvre architect Michel Goutal to revert the changes made by his predecessor Albert Ferran in the late 1930s, triggering protests from the Cy Twombly Foundation on grounds that the then-deceased painter's work had been created to fit with the room's prior decoration. That same year, the Louvre commissioned French artist
François Morellet to create a work for the Lefuel stairs, on the first floor. For ''L'esprit d'escalier'' Morellet redesigned the stairscase's windows, echoing their original structures but distorting them to create a disturbing optical effect. On 6 June 2014, the Decorative Arts section on the first floor of the
Cour Carrée's northern wing opened after comprehensive refurbishment. In January 2020, under the direction of
Jean-Luc Martinez, the museum inaugurated a new contemporary art commission, ''L'Onde du Midi'' by Venezuelan kinetic artist
Elias Crespin. The sculpture hovers under the Escalier du Midi, the staircase on the South of the
Perrault Colonnade. The Louvre, like many other museums and galleries, felt the
impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and cultural heritage. The museum closed after the end of the day on 29 February 2020, and it did not reopen until 6 July. The museum operated with limited capacity until 29 October, when it was ordered closed again due to an increase in COVID cases in France, and reopened on 19 May 2021. As a result, the museum recorded only 2.7 million visitors in 2020, down from 9.6 million in 2019 and a record 10.2 million in 2018. In preparation for the
2024 Olympics, the Louvre staged an exhibit about the Games' history that links their ancient beginnings to the modern era. Attendance rose to 8.9 million in 2023, 14 percent above 2022, but still short of the record of 10.2 million in 2018. In January 2025, French President
Emmanuel Macron announced plans for a renovation and expansion of the Louvre, including a room solely for the Mona Lisa. The planned renovation and expansion was a result of the increasing number of visitors each year to the Louvre. The renovation is set to begin in September 2026. On 16 June 2025, the museum's employees went on strike in protest against chronic issues such as overcrowding, understaffing and "untenable" working conditions. On 19 October 2025, the Louvre was subjected to
a robbery through a forced window in the
Galerie d'Apollon. The museum reported that jewellery had been stolen, and the perpetrators fled by motorbike. They used a construction platform left by the building to enter a window and leave with their score. The museum was closed for the day. French interior minister
Laurent Nuñez said the robbery involved intruders entering the museum via a basket lift using a platform mounted on a lorry and then cut into the window using what appeared to be angle grinders. Nine major pieces of jewellery from the crowns of France were taken in a few minutes. Eight pieces were stolen, including an emerald necklace that belonged to
Empress Marie-Louise and three jewels that belonged to queens
Marie-Amelie and
Hortense. The ninth item, the
Crown of Empress Eugénie, was recovered the same day in a street close to the Louvre but in a damaged condition. On 25 October, two of the suspected thieves were arrested, one was trying to fly to Algeria from Charles de Gaulle Airport.On 29 October, the prosecutor in charge said that they had "partially admitted" to their involvement in the heist. She added that the jewels were yet to be recovered.On the same day, five additional suspects were arrested, but only one of them was allegedly part of the four-man heist team. On 30 October, police arrested five more suspects, but there was still no sign of the stolen jewels. In late November, a water line burst, and damaged between 300 and 400 books and journals, mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries. File:Pavillon des Sessions 01.jpg|The 's display of non-Western art from the
Musée du Quai Branly, opened in 2000 File:Cour Visconti (Louvre) D201512a.jpg|The 's ground floor covered to host the new Islamic Art Department in 2012 File:Les arts de l'Islam au Louvre (8055981963).jpg|Islamic art display in the covered , 2012 File:Louvre, dipartimento di arte islamica, 01.JPG|Underground display of the Islamic Art Department, 2012 == Collections ==