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Louvre: Louvre Museum
built 255 days ago
Established in 1793 by the French Republic, the Louvre Museum is one of the earliest European art museums. Divided into 7 departments, the Louvre collections incorporate works dating from the birth of the great civilizations right up to the first half of the 19th century. The collections include sculpture, Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian and Roman antiquities, paintings, prints, and drawings.
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Established in 1793 by the French Republic, the Louvre Museum, in the company of the Ashmolean Museum (1683), the Dresden Museum (1744) and the Vatican Museum (1784) is one of the earliest European museums. Divided into 7 departments, the Louvre collections incorporate works dating from the birth of the great antique civilisations right up to the first half of the XIXth century, thereby confirming its encyclopedic vocation.
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For eight centuries the Louvre has stood as a unique national monument, central to the people and spirit of France. In 1983, President François Mitterrand requested that it be modernized, expanded and better integrated with the city — all without compromising the integrity of the historic building. The challenge was magnified by the fact that the Louvre was originally constructed, and used for most of its life, as a royal palace; it was fundamentally ill-suited to serve as a museum.
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Louis XIV was the last king to put his mark on the Louvre before virtually abandoning it in 1678, when he moved the royal seat of power to Versailles. The Louvre began its first step toward becoming a museum in the 18th century, when the abandoned palace developed as an artists’ residence and academy with public exhibitions of the royal collections. After the Revolution, it was officially declared a museum under the First Republic in 1793. In the 19th century, Napoleon I evicted the artists and academics living in the Louvre, and renamed it the Musée Napoleon, stocking it full of “souvenir†artworks pilfered during his various conquests (which the Allies made him return after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815). Improvements to the museum were continued under the Restoration and Napoleon III’s Second Empire.
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Having lost its position as the seat of the monarchy, the Louvre quickly became the seat of the cultural world. After the disappearance of the Tuileries, it found its vocation as a museum. Under the Second Empire, the gifts of artwork flooded in and considerably enriched the collection. The museum, until then designated solely for artists, was for the first time open to the public -- who arrived in droves. Slowly, the artwork, (until then more crammed than exposed), took on more importance. Henceforth, it was no longer the richness of the collection that mattered, but that each painting, each sculpture or each tapestry was presented to its fullest.
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The Louvre was built on the site of a medieval fortress on the banks of the Seine river. It was used as the official residence of the French Kings during the 16th and 17th centuries before the Court moved to Versailles in 1682. It officially became a "Peoples Museum" in 1793 after the Revolution, and is now one of the most important museums in the world.
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