37 Facts About Louvre Palace

1.

Louvre Palace, often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.

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2.

Louvre Palace is situated on the right bank of the Seine, between the Quai Francois Mitterrand to its south, the to its west, the Rue de Rivoli to its north, and the Place du Louvre to its east.

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3.

Louvre Palace is slightly askew of the Historic Axis, a roughly eight-kilometre architectural line bisecting the city.

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4.

Many sections of the Louvre Palace are referred to as "wings" and "pavilions" – typically, the pavilions are the blocks at either the end or the center of a wing.

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5.

Wolf's proposal in 1969 that Louvre Palace derives instead from Latin Rubras, meaning "red soil", is more plausible.

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6.

Present-day Louvre Palace is a vast complex of wings and pavilions which, although superficially homogeneous in scale and architecture, is the result of many phases of building, modification, destruction and reconstruction.

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7.

Original Louvre Palace was nearly square in plan, at seventy-eight by seventy-two meters, and enclosed by a 2.

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8.

Meanwhile, the Louvre Palace Castle was left in a state of increasing disrepair, even as it remained used as an arsenal and prison.

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9.

Louvre Palace pictured in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1410s.

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10.

Louvre Palace pictured in the Altarpiece of the Parlement de Paris, mid-15th century.

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11.

Louvre Palace seen from the south, pictured in the Pieta of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, late 15th century.

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12.

Louvre Palace's extended it to the ground floor of the Petite Galerie, which had previously been the venue for the King's Council That "summer apartment" was fitted by architect Louis Le Vau, who had succeeded Lemercier upon the latter's death in 1654.

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13.

Louvre Palace rebuilt the as the more ornate Galerie d'Apollon, created a new suite of rooms flanking it to the west with a new facade on what became known as the, and expanded the former on the northern side as well as making it double-height, creating the Salon Carre in its current dimensions.

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14.

The plan of the Louvre Palace's expansion were made by Louis Visconti, a disciple of Percier, who died suddenly in December 1853 and was succeeded in early 1854 by Hector Lefuel.

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15.

Tuileries Louvre Palace was set afire by the Communards during the suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871.

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16.

The third phase of the Grand Louvre Palace, mostly executed by the late 1990s, involved the refurbishment of the museum's galleries in the Sully and Denon Wings where much exhibition space had been freed during the project second phase.

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17.

Whereas the name "Louvre Palace" refers to its intermittent role as a monarchical residence, this is neither its original nor its present function.

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18.

The Louvre Palace has always been associated with French state power and representation, under many modalities that have varied within the vast building and across its long history.

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19.

Louvre Palace started as a military facility and retained military uses during most of its history.

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20.

The Louvre Palace hosted a significant arsenal in the 15th and most of the 16th centuries, until its transfer in 1572 to the facility that is the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal.

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21.

Round keep of Philip II's Louvre Palace Castle became the symbolic location from which all the king's fiefs depended.

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22.

The traditional formula for these, that they "depended on the king for his great keep of the Louvre Palace" remained in use until the 18th century, long after the keep itself had been demolished in the 1520s.

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23.

Philip II created a permanent repository for the royal archive at the Louvre Palace, following the loss of the French kings' previously itinerant records at the Battle of Freteval .

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24.

In 1770, the archives of the Chambre des Comptes were placed in the Louvre Palace's attic, followed by the archives of the Marshals of France in 1778 and those of the Order of Saint Michael in 1780.

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25.

The Louvre Palace was reserved for high-ranking prisoners, while other state captives were held in the Grand Chatelet.

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26.

In 1303, the Louvre Palace was the venue of the second-ever meeting of France's Estates General, in the wake of the first meeting held the previous year at Notre-Dame de Paris.

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27.

Role of the Louvre Palace disappeared following the end of the French monarchy in 1870.

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28.

Beyond his minority, Louis XIII did not much reside in the Louvre Palace and preferred the suburban residences of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau .

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29.

In 1767, a project to relocate the Royal Library from its site on rue de Richelieu into the Louvre Palace was presented by Jacques-Germain Soufflot, endorsed by Superintendent de Marigny and approved by Louis XV, but remained stillborn for lack of funds.

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30.

One of the more recent ceremonial gatherings in the Louvre Palace was a candlelit dinner given in the on 10 April 1957 in honor of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, hosted by French President Rene Coty at the end of their weeklong visit in Paris.

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31.

Louvre Palace has traditionally not had much of a judiciary role, since royal justice was strongly associated with the much older Palais de la Cite, and local judicial functions under the Prevot de Paris, including torture and incarceration, were mainly located at the Grand Chatelet.

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32.

Louvre Palace again hosted a judiciary institution when the Conseil d'Etat was located there between 1824 and 1832.

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33.

Louvre Palace was the scene of capital punishment on various occasions.

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34.

Entertainment performances such as tournaments, games, balls and theater were a core part of court life at the time when the Louvre Palace was a royal residence.

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35.

Ecole du Louvre Palace was created in 1882 with the mission to "extract from the collections the knowledge they contain, and to train curators, missionaries and excavators".

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36.

Oldest part of the above-ground Louvre Palace is the southwest corner of the square block that faces the center of Paris to the east.

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37.

Louvre Palace looking west across the Cour Napoleon and the Louvre Pyramid.

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