The Louvre Museum

The Louvre Museum is one of the world’s biggest museums and a historic monument. It is a central attraction of Paris in France which is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement. Nearly 35,000 items from prehistory to the 21st century are displayed over an area of 60,600 square meters. With more than 9.7 million tourists each year, the Louvre is the world’s most visited museum.

The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace which was originally constructed as a fortress in the before 12th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are noticeable in the basement of the museum. The building was expanded many times to form the current Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV decided the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre initially as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of antique Greek and Roman monument. In 1692, the building was engaged by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the initial of a sequence of salons. The Académie stayed at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to show the nation’s masterpieces.