Musée du Louvre

The Louvre Museum is a Parisian museum located within the Louvre Palace in the 1st arrondissement. It holds the status of a national museum in France. Organised into nine departments, its collections showcase Western art from the Middle Ages to 1848, as well as the art of the ancient civilisations that preceded and influenced it (Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman), the art of early Christians, and Islamic art. With 72,735 m2 of halls and galleries, it is the largest art museum in the world, ahead of the Hermitage Museum (66,842 m2) in Russia and the National Museum of China (65,000 m2).

An immense royal residence for eight hundred years, on the right bank of the Seine, the Louvre Palace is closely linked to the arts and their preservation. In the 16th century, François I made it the emblem of the Renaissance in the heart of Paris. Following Louis XIV's departure for the Palace of Versailles at the end of the 17th century, a portion of the royal collections of paintings and ancient sculptures were stored there. For a century, the palace housed several academies, including the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, as well as various artists and their workshops, lodged by the king. The project to present the masterpieces of the Crown's collection to the public was born in the Age of Enlightenment. The Revolution accomplished this goal by inaugurating the museum in August 1793, on the anniversary of the fall of the monarchy. It was subsequently enriched, enlarged, and remodelled by successive regimes.

Since the end of the Middle Ages, French sovereigns endeavoured to commission works from the greatest European artists and to gather masterpieces of their time and past eras. Augmented at its opening in 1793 by works confiscated from émigré nobles or churches, these collections have continuously grown through war spoils, acquisitions, patronage, bequests, donations, and archaeological discoveries over the following two centuries. In 2019, the Louvre held over 500,000 works, of which more than 36,000 are on display. Among its most famous pieces are La Joconde, the Vénus de Milo, Le Scribe accroupi, the Victoire de Samothrace, and the Code de Hammurabi.

With 8.7 million visitors in 2024, three-quarters of whom are foreigners, the Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world and the most frequented paid cultural site in France. The developments of the 1980s — particularly the underground entrance marked by the glass pyramid — adapted it to mass tourism. The palace also includes the Musée des Arts décoratifs and the École du Louvre. The equestrian statue of Louis XIV, in the Cour Napoléon, marks the starting point of the Parisian historical axis.