The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre) is the largest museum in the world, and arguably the most popular as well. Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” probably made Louvre a more famous place than it already was.
The Louvre Pyramid, built in 1989 by architect I.M. Pei
Photo taking was not allowed in the Louvre, and we only had slightly over an hour to explore the large collection, which was clearly not enough. In fact it would probably take days, weeks or months to explore every bit of the museum.
Despite the rush, we managed to take a look at the famous Mona Lisa painting with her creepy smile.
The Inverted Pyramid (La Pyramide Inversée)
In the final chapter of “The Da Vinci Code,”
the Holy Grail is buried beneath the small
pyramid below the inverted glass pyramid
History of the Louvre [Reference]
The building of Louvre itself was quite a story.
Louvre was initially a fortress to protect Paris from the Anglo-Norman threat in the 12th century. The fortress lost it purpose in the 15th century and was torn down to be reconstructed into a palace in the 16th century.
The construction of the current Louvre building begun in 1546 and was only completed in 1876. The Palais du Louvre lost its original purpose when Louis XIV moved to Versailles in 1670s.
In 1692, Louis XIV ordered the creation of a gallery of antique sculpture in Louvre, thus initiated the transformation of Louvre from a palace to a museum. The Museum Central des Arts was officially opened to the public as a museum in 1793, and the collections gradually spread to take over the building, to become the Louvre Museum we have today.
