The Louvre in Paris is far more than a home for the Mona Lisa – it is itself an evolving work of architecture and design, shaped over eight centuries. Originally built as a medieval fortress by King Philippe Auguste around 1190, it featured thick stone walls, round towers and a moat. Over time the fortress was transformed into a royal palace. In 1546 King Francis I commissioned Pierre Lescot to rebuild the old castle in the Italianate Renaissance style, creating the elegant Lescot Wing and ornate elements like the famous Salle des Caryatides. Through the 17th and 19th centuries successive architects (Lemercier, Le Vau, Perrault, Visconti, Lefuel and others) kept the façades harmonious: for example, Claude Perrault’s 1660s Louvre Colonnade explicitly echoed ground-floor window patterns from Lescot’s earlier wing to preserve continuity. In fact, as one historian notes, “the apparent stylistic consistency is largely due to conscious efforts of architects over several centuries to echo each other’s work and preserve historical continuity”. Even today visitors can glimpse remnants of the 1202 medieval keep in the Cour Carrée foundations, a tangible reminder of the Louvre’s origins.

The building passed to Versailles’ orbit in 1682 when Louis XIV moved west, but after the Revolution its role changed dramatically. In 1793, the palace officially opened as the Louvre Museum, becoming “the property of the French people” with the royal art collection as its core. Revolutionary governments and Napoleon’s conquests flooded it with new works: Napoleonic armies brought home plundered art from Italy and Egypt, adding thousands of sculptures and paintings to the Louvre. By the 19th century the Louvre’s wings ran westward along the Seine to the Tuileries palace (built by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564), which itself was linked into the Louvre complex in grand building campaigns. Napoleon III (mid-1800s) finished the north and south wings: his architects Visconti and Héctor Lefuel added lavish Second-Empire pavilions that still carry the richness of French Baroque, yet carefully echoed the classical pavilions of Lemercier and Lescot to maintain harmony. By 1871 (after the burning of the Tuileries) the Louvre stood as a nearly complete palace, a “rambling royal palace on which a long chain of French artists and architects put their marks”.

The Grand Louvre and Pei’s Pyramid

The Louvre that visitors know today took shape most recently in the late 20th century. In 1981 President François Mitterrand launched the Grand Louvre project to modernise the ageing palace. He appointed Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei in 1983 to oversee a major renovation. Pei spent months studying French culture and the Louvre’s history, ultimately envisioning a bold insertion of modern glass within the historic complex. His signature idea was a new main entrance: a 21-meter glass-and-metal pyramid at the center of the Cour Napoléon. The Louvre’s own website describes this pyramid as “an architectural feat that has come to symbolise the museum itself” Completed in 1989, the pyramid serves as a luminous entrance hall where visitors descend into a grand underground lobby. Pei’s design included an entirely new subterranean ticketing and reception hall (the Hall Napoléon) and expanded galleries in the Richelieu wing, effectively doubling the museum’s accessible space. Although controversial at first, the glass pyramid has become beloved – a modern icon juxtaposed against the centuries-old facades. Indeed, Pei deliberately referenced 17th-century French landscape architect André Le Nôtre in the pyramid’s geometry and site lines, reinforcing harmony between the new structure and the palace.

Beneath the pyramid lies the cavernous Hall Napoléon, the museum’s main lobby. Here visitors emerge from underground to face the Louvre’s historic wings. Pei’s solution was to create “a central underground lobby affording direct access to the museum’s three wings”, which greatly improved circulation and visitor flow. Architecturally, the Hall Napoléon is a study in contrasts: a vast, light-filled space defined by sleek steel and glass (the pyramid’s structure overhead) set against the stone walls of the palace. As one design firm observes, the Louvre “plays off two very different architectural aesthetics”: the minimalist, modern pyramid versus the “incredibly ornate 12th Century” palace. This deliberate juxtaposition – modern converse structure against historic inverse structure – is now celebrated as a triumph of adaptive design.

Architectural Continuity and Design Details

Throughout its long history, the Louvre’s architects were remarkably careful to blend old and new. Even when building in different styles, they borrowed details to tie the ensemble together. For example, the famous Galerie du Bord-de-l’eau (Grande Galerie) – a 17th-century, Seine-facing gallery originally attributed to Androuet du Cerceau – was extended by Percier and Fontaine in the Napoleonic era using the same giant-order capitals for visual unity. When Claude Perrault designed the east façade (the Louvre Colonnade) in the 1660s, his groundbreaking double-column colonnade still retained Lescot’s earlier window shapes at ground level, so the new façade harmonised with its Renaissance neighbors. In short, each generation of architects echoed its predecessors. As Wikipedia notes, “from the 1620s to the 1870s, architects Louis Le Vau, Jacques Lemercier, Louis Visconti, Héctor Lefuel and others built wings and pavilions as echoes of earlier designs,” ensuring a coherent whole. Even I. M. Pei paid homage to Parisian tradition: he explicitly cited André Le Nôtre (designer of the Tuileries garden) in planning the pyramid’s proportions.

Inside the Louvre, grand decorative spaces offer further inspiration. The 17th-century Galerie d’Apollon – with its soaring vaulted ceiling painted by Delacroix and lavish gilding – was meticulously restored in recent years, and its re-opening was “greeted with jubilation”. Likewise, the ornate Salle des États (the coronation room for Napoleon I) and Salle des Gardes showcase wood-paneled ceilings and sculptural detail from the Second Empire. For interior designers, these spaces are textbook examples of French Baroque and Rococo opulence. In fact, a design publication points out that the Louvre’s architecture “plays off two very different aesthetics”: the spare modern pyramid and the richly ornamented palace, making the museum itself a valuable lesson in blending historical detail with contemporary form.

From French Jewel to Global Icon

Over the centuries the Louvre has not only shaped Parisian architecture, it has permeated global culture. Millions know it today thanks to world-famous art and popular media. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, displayed in the Salle des États, is perhaps the most notorious: her presence alone draws huge crowds. The Louvre even features in modern storytelling: Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code (and Ron Howard’s film) opened in the Louvre, showing I.M. Pei’s pyramid and the Mona Lisa on screen. In the Da Vinci Code, a Louvre curator is found dead under the Vitruvian Man, making the museum itself almost a character in that thriller. More recently, pop stars Beyoncé and Jay-Z shot their high-profile “APESH*T” video inside the museum, dancing before masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. These high-visibility appearances underscore that the Louvre – with its architecture and art – is a symbol of culture that resonates worldwide.

Even outside film and music, the Louvre draws attention in art and design circles. It was named one of the world’s best-loved museums (even earning a nod in the Apesht* video), and by one measure it is the most visited museum on Earth, averaging about 15,000 visitors a day. Today its collection spans nearly 9,000 years of human history with roughly 380,000 objects, from ancient Egypt to Islamic art.

Inspiration for Architects and Designers

For architects and interior designers in Paris (and beyond), the Louvre is a constant source of inspiration. Its long façades and grand courtyards exemplify classical symmetry, while its interiors – from the Apollo Gallery to Napoleon III’s apartments – illustrate the rich interior design traditions of France. Contemporary Parisian designers often study how the Louvre’s 21st-century renovations were handled: for instance, how Pei inserted a modernist pyramid without compromising the “strong sense of historical continuity”. The Louvre’s success in marrying new and old has become a teaching point in preservation and museum design. Likewise, the museum’s decorative elements – gilt moldings, marble columns, grand staircases – continue to inform luxury interior design in Paris to this day.

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