- Type
- Palace / château
- Built
- 1546 · 16th century
- Site origins
- c. 1190 per Wikidata – an earlier stronghold or first mention
- Location
- Île-de-France, France
- Style
- Neoclassical architecture
- Architect
- I. M. Pei, Louis Le Vau
- Heritage
- part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site (an old town or a valley, for example)
- Coordinates
- 48.8610°, 2.3359°
History
Around 1190, before setting off on crusade, Philip II Augustus built a fortress with a round keep on the Seine to guard Paris from the west. In the 14th century Charles V turned it into a splendid residence with a library. Francis I had the keep pulled down in 1528, and in 1546 Pierre Lescot began a Renaissance palace that successive rulers enlarged over three centuries: Henry IV added the Grand Gallery and Louis XIV the east colonnade. After the court moved to Versailles in 1682, academies and artists settled in the palace, and in 1793 a museum opened here. Napoleon III completed the New Louvre, and in 1989 the glass pyramid designed by I. M. Pei was unveiled in the Cour Napoléon.
What to see
The former royal rooms hold art from antiquity to the 19th century, including the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo. Beneath the Sully wing you can see the foundations of Philip Augustus's medieval fortress and its moat, uncovered in the 1980s. Look out too for Lescot's Renaissance façade in the Cour Carrée and the opulent apartments of Napoleon III.
Wikipedia article Wikidata Q1075988
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