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The Louvre is at the same time a splendid and huge royal palace
along the Seine river and one of the best art museums in the world. It hosts
the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci one of the most
famous paintings... Even more since Da Vinci Code Book
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Louvre Museum History |
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LE LOUVRE |
Louvre Museum History
The first
Louvre was a fortress built at the beginning of the 13th century by
Philip II Augustus to defend Paris against the Normans and English. It
consisted of a dungeon surrounded by towered walls. This castle, was
sacrificed in the 16th century at the end of the reign of Francis the
first in order to make room for a new Renaissance structure. You can
still the old walls in a dedicated area in the basement of the
Louvre Museum. |
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Louvre Museum Pictures |
Key dates about Le Louvre
1564 :
Catherine de Medici decided to create a
grandiose royal residence by joining the Louvre and the Palais des
Tuileries by a series of buildings.
1682 : The Louvre was abandoned as a royal
residence when Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles
1793 : During the French Revolution the Louvre became a museum.
In the
late 1980s the museum embarked upon an aggressive program of
renovation and expansion. When the first plans by the Chinese-American
architect I.M. Pei were unveiled in 1984, they included a glass
pyramid in the central courtyard |
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