Posted on January 20th, 2008 by admin

The long and complex history of the Louvre extends over eight centuries of planning, building, destruction and reconstruction. Successive sings of France, from Francois Ito Louis XIV, enlarged the medieval ‘fortified castle into a sumptuous palace, until the establishment of absolutist rule led to the sudden transfer of the court to Versailles. The louvre was then abandoned, half completed. Thereafter it provided tomes and studios for such renowned painters as Fragonarcd and Charciin; Louis XVI returned briefly to his city palace; and finally in ‘793 the Louvre became the prototype of the modern art museum.
The latest plan for the development of the Louvre, the “Grand _Louvre” project, was launched in 1981 and is due to be completed by :he end of the millennium. France’s largest museum will then be the crowning feature in the government’s programme of grands projects for the closing years of the 20th century.

In November* 1993, on the 200th anniversary of the Louvre as a museum, the second and most important part of the Grand Louvre project was completed. It had begun in 1989 with the departure of the Ministry of Finance from the northern (Richelieu) wing of the palace, which it had occupied for over a hundred years, since the time of the Duc de Morny, Napoleon III’s minister, to new premises at Bercy (see entry). As the opening of the new entrance to the museum under I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid had signalled the completion of the first phase of the project, so the opening of the north wing (also designed by Pei) on November 18th 1993 marked the successful completion of the second. In the next phase, which was completed in 1997, the rooms in the Denon and Sully wings were re-arranged, providing a further 10,000sq.,/107,000sq.ft of exhibition space. By 1999 a further 5000sq.m/54,000 sq. ft should have been added.

After 15 years of rebuilding work the total exhibition space available to the museum will have almost doubled to 61,300sq.m/660,00sq.ft. At the same time the construction of the Carrousel du Louvre, the underground facilities to be provided under the courtyard round the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (an underground car park with over 700 places, a service centre with shops, restaurants and function rooms, all privately run), linked with the museum’s reception area, has been completed. In addition the facades of the palace have been restored and the Jardin Carrousel replanted. Finally, the palace façades have been carefully restored and the Tuileries gardens (see entry) to the west revamped.

With the reopening of the remodelled rooms on the first floor of the Sully wing round the Cour Carrée in December 1992 the planned rearrangement of the Louvre’s picture collections began.
In future they are to be displayed in national schools, since French painting accounts for more than half the museum’s holdings. The schools of northern Europe will be shown in the north (Richelieu) wing; the southern schools, as hitherto, will be in the south (Denon) wing; and French painting will be mainly in the Sully wing round the Cour Carrée.

The present division into seven departments – Oriental (including Islamic) art, Egyptian (including Coptic) art, Greek, Etruscan and Roman art, sculpture, painting, applied and decorative art and graphic art – will be retained, though the separation of genres will not be absolutely rigid. Sculpture will be displayed mainly on the ground floor of the Denon and Richelieu wings, and painting and graphic art will be brought closer together.

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