Musée du Louvre
France > Paris > Louvre > Musée du Louvre

Musée du Louvre et Pyramide

The origins of the Musée du Louvre lie in the personal art collection of François I, who summoned Leonardo da Vinci from Milan to add some prestige to the French Renaissance. Leonardo brought his greatest works with him across the Alps, including the Mona Lisa, which remains the museum's most famous possession and the idée fixe of an unhealthy number of visitors. Although artists and academics – as well as prostitutes – lived in the palace under Louis XIV, and the French Academy ran salons as early as 1725, the Louvre was only opened as an art gallery in 1793, the year of Louis XVI's execution. Turning the palace into a museum wasn't quite the pure Revolutionary gesture it seems, however, as the original plan had been conceived under Louis XV. Within a decade of its opening, Napoleon's wagonloads of war booty – not all of which has been returned – transformed the Louvre's art collection into the world's largest.

Though there are too many masterpieces to highlight here, few visitors will be able to resist the allure of the Mona Lisa, if only to see what the fuss is all about. If you're planning on making a short visit, you might consider confining yourself to this, the Denon section of the museum, which also houses the rest of the Italian paintings and the great French nineteenth century canvases, as well as the great Italian and Classical sculptures. A relatively peaceful alternative would be to focus on the grand chronologies of French painting and sculpture.