Musée du Louvre

The Musée du Louvre (the Louvre Museum), popularly known as the Louvre, is one of the world's largest and most visited art museums in the world. Located on the right bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, it is often considered the landmark of the city. It covers an area of over 60,000 square metres and holds exhibitions of approximately 35,000 works of art dating from medieval times to the 1848, which include such masterpieces as Mona Lisa and the Venus of Milo.

The museum is housed in a building that in the 12th century functioned as a fortress and in the 14th century was transformed into a royal palace. During the 16th century the palace was renovated by the architect Pierre Lescot, who extended the palace with two courtyards. A couple of years later, Catharina de Medici further expanded the complex by adding the Tuileries palace. However, in 1682, when Louis XIV decided to leave the Louvre and move to the Palace of Versailles, the palace was converted into a place where the royal collection was displayed. A decade later the building became home to two art academies, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which remained at this place for almost a century. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decided to use the Louvre as a public museum displaying the nation's most famous works of art. The museum was inaugurated on 10 August 1793 and the first exhibitions of over 500 paintings was staged there.

Claude Perrault's Colonnade is the easternmost façade of the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It has been celebrated as the foremost masterpiece of French Architectural Classicism since its construction, mostly between 1667 and 1670. Cast in a restrained classicizing baroque manner, it interprets rules laid down by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose works Perrault had translated into French.

Throughout the years the collection of the museum has gradually expanded and today it holds over 35,000 objects. All of them belong to one of eight major Curatorial Departments: Near Eastern Antiquities; Egyptian Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculptures; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.