You Gotta Louvre Going to the Museum

The Musée du Louvre (Grand Louvre) or Louvre Museum inn English is a museum that can boast a few things: they can boast being one of the world's largest museum in the world and the most visited museum in the world. Their visitor count smashes the second placed museum, the British museum. The British Museum has just over 5,500,000 visitors while the Louvre has 8,500,000 visitors per year almost three million more. It can also boast that it is a historic monument and is a central landmark of Paris. Where it is located you will find some of the best villas in France as Paris is a city full of culture.

The museum is housed in the Louvre palace which is a building that was first built as a fortress in the late 12th century but there are still remains of the Fortress are still in place in the crypt. Over time the building has been extended numerous times, mostly over the middle ages to what you see today.

The Louvre was abandoned by Louis XIV who moved to Palace of Versailles whilst doing so he left most of his royal collection there making it a place to display them. This included items such as sculptures a few years after Louis left the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture occupied the building. The Académie stayed at the Louvre for roughly 100 years and during the French revolution, the National Assembly ruled that the Louvre should be used as a museum that would display some of the nation's greatest masterpieces.

On the the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise the 10th of August 1793 the museum was opened and had an exhibition of over 500 paintings and almost 200 objects of art, with most of the the pieces being items that were taken from church and royal properties. The public was given free access on three days per week The building had to be closed in 1796 because of structural problems that the building had, it was reopened on 1801. The influence of Napoleon became strong as he built up a good collection which increased the amount that the museum already had and because of this, the museum was renamed the Musée Napoléon. Although after the defeat at Waterloo many of the works that were seized from Napoleon's armies were returned to their original owners. But that didn't stop the collection from growing because during the reigns if Louis XVIII and Charles X the works increased and during the Second French Empire the museum had acquired 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and gifts since the Third Republic, except during the two World Wars. As of 2008, the collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

Today the Museum has almost 400,000 objects and 35,000 works of art in various departments and has more than 60, 600 square metres dedicated to the permanent collection, it has featured as the point of interest in the book and film The Da Vinci Code. The museum got a big pay-day by allowing filming of the filming in its galleries.




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