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Paris Attractions
The Louvre Museum
In the centre of Paris on the Right Bank of the Seine, lies the world famous Louvre museum. It is a top tourist attraction for the city of Paris, in France and attracts thousands of visitors per week through its doors. It is the national museum of France and houses priceless collections of art and historic artefacts collected throughout its history.
The Louvre Museum is housed within the Louvre Palace which began life as a fortress in the reign of Phillip II, in the 12th century. It continued to be a royal residence until 1674, when Louis XIV decided to retain the royal collection there and reside in the Palace of Versailles, instead. During the French Revolution Louis XVI was imprisoned and the ruling assembly decided to dedicate the Louvre to monuments of all sciences and arts and that the building should be a national treasure. Shortly after the French Revolution, the Louvre Museum opened in 1973. Upon it's opening as a museum, just 537 paintings were on display and a hundred or so historical pieces, the majority being royal pieces or artefacts taken from churches and monasteries.
The collection of Art soon began to expand and 100,000 livres per year were dedicated to improving and enhancing the collection. Soon, pieces from all over Europe were filling the galleries. The building itself was beginning to show the strains age and of the many people using the facility and soon structural damage was in evidence. The building was closed for structural repairs and extensions from 1796 and reopened after major works and restoration on the building had been performed. During the closure the art and historical pieces were re-arranged in a chronological order and with new galleries and lighting, the Museum was brought up to date. During Napoleons era many additional pieces, acquired from wealthy land owners, were added to the museum and the collection. Napoleon even re-named the museum the Musee Napoleon, however this was reversed and many items returned to the original owners after Napoleons defeat at Waterloo. The collection of art and historic pieces steadily grew throughout the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X.
The Louvre Museum has priceless items from all around the world and it has departments within the Museum that reflect this such as: Islamic, Roman, Egyptian, Greek, Middle Eastern and Etruscan and also galleries for drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures. Priceless objects dating as far back as the 6th millennium BCE up to the 19th century CE are displayed and exhibited throughout the numerous departments of the 60,000 metre site and approximately 35,000 items are housed there to date.
