2. ■ The Louvre Palace often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic building of the
French statelocated on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vastexpanse
of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.
Originally a military facility, it has served numerous government-related functions in
the past, including intermittently as a royal residence between the 14th and 18th
centuries. It is now mostlyused by the Louvre Museum, which first opened there in
1793.
4. ■ Whereas the area had been inhabited for thousands of years,[1] the Louvre's history
starts around 1190 with its first construction as a fortress defending the western front
of the Wall of Philip II Augustus. The Louvre's oldest section still standing above ground,
its Lescot Wing, dates from the late 1540s, when Francis I started the replacement of
the medieval castle with a new design inspired by classical antiquity and
Italian Renaissance architecture. Most parts of the current building were constructed in
the 17th and 19th centuries.
5. ■ For more than three centuries, the history of the Louvre has been closely intertwined
with that of the Tuileries Palace, created to its west by Catherine de' Medici in 1564
and finally demolished in 1883. The Tuileries was the main seat of French executive
power during the last third of that period, from the return of the King and his court
from Versailles in October 1789 to the Paris Commune which decided to burn it down
in its final days in May 1871. The Pavillon de Flore and Pavillon de Marsan, which used
to respectively mark the southern and northern ends of the Tuileries, are now
considered part of the Louvre Palace. The Carrousel Garden, first created in the late
19th century in what used to be the great courtyard of the Tuileries (or Cour du
Carrousel), is now considered part of the Tuileries Garden.
6.
7. Building history
■ This section focuses on matters of design, construction and decoration, leaving aside
the fitting or remodeling of exhibition spaces within the museum, which are described
in the article Louvre. No fewer than twenty building campaigns have been identified in
the history of the Louvre Palace.The architect of the largest such campaign, Hector
Lefuel, crisply summarized the identity of the complex by noting: "Le Louvre est un
monumentqui a vécu" (translatable as "The Louvre is a building that has gone through
a lot"). In the early 1920s author Henri Verne .who would soon become the Louvre's
Director, noted that "it has become, through the very slow pace of its development, the
most representative monument of our nationa
