Louvre Museum

Philip II began the Louvre Palace in the late 12th century to guard Paris against attack from the west, the kings of England then still holding Normandy; remnants of the medieval fortress survive in the museum's crypt. Charles V turned it from a military building into a residence in the 14th century, and in 1546 Francis I began rebuilding it in French Renaissance style. Francis had already gathered at Fontainebleau the paintings, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa among them, that later entered the museum's collections. From 1673 many of the king's pictures hung in the Cabinet du Roi, which certain art lovers were allowed to visit; on 14 October 1750 Louis XV settled on a display of 96 pieces at the Luxembourg Palace, a gallery that closed in 1780.

In May 1791 the National Constituent Assembly declared that the Louvre would be "a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts". Louis XVI was imprisoned on 10 August 1792 and the royal collection became national property. The museum opened on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's fall, as the Muséum central des Arts de la République, showing 537 paintings and 184 objects of art, three-quarters from the royal collections and the rest confiscated from émigrés and the Church. Structural deficiencies closed it in May 1796, and it reopened on 14 July 1801.

Napoleon appointed Vivant Denon, a veteran of the Egyptian campaign, as the museum's first director on 19 November 1802, and on Denon's suggestion it was renamed the Musée Napoléon in July 1803. Holdings grew by looting and by treaty: the Treaty of Tolentino brought the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican in 1797, and the Horses of Saint Mark, taken from Venice, were set atop the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. After Waterloo the former owners sought their works back; Denon was loath to comply without a treaty of restitution, and many pieces were returned, though far from all.

Charles X created the Musée Égyptien in 1826, its collection first curated by Jean-François Champollion; it forms the basis of the present Department of Egyptian Antiquities. Napoleon III bought 11,835 works of the Campana collection in 1861, and the museum added 20,000 artefacts between 1852 and 1870. On 23 May 1871, as the French Army advanced into Paris, Communards led by Jules Bergeret set fire to the adjoining Tuileries Palace; the blaze burned for forty-eight hours and spread to the museum wing beside it, and the museum was saved by Paris firemen and employees led by the curator Henry Barbet de Jouy.

Truck convoys began leaving Paris on 27 August 1939, and by 28 December most of the collection had gone. The Mona Lisa was among the works sent to the Château de Chambord, while select sculptures including the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo went to the Château de Valençay. Art began returning in early 1945.

Thousands of artworks were stolen under the Nazi occupation. Of more than 150,000 seized works, 61,233 returned to France, and in 1949 the state entrusted 2,130 unclaimed pieces, 1,001 of them paintings, to the Direction des Musées de France as MNRs, Musées Nationaux Récupération; between 10 and 35 per cent are believed to have come from Jewish spoliations. They were exhibited together from 1950 to 1954 so that rightful claimants could identify their property. Prime Minister Alain Juppé set up the Mattéoli Commission in 1997; by the government's account the Louvre is responsible for 678 works still unclaimed.

François Mitterrand proposed the Grand Louvre in 1981, moving the Finance Ministry out of the North Wing to give almost the whole palace to the museum; in 1984 his chosen architect I. M. Pei set out a plan built around a glass pyramid over a new underground entrance. The spaces around the pyramid were inaugurated on 15 October 1988 and the lobby beneath it on 30 March 1989, and on 18 November 1993 Mitterrand opened the renovated Richelieu Wing, the museum's largest single expansion.

The museum is owned by the French state and answers to the Ministry of Culture. On 19 October 2025 thieves reached a window of the Galerie d'Apollon on a lorry-mounted platform, cut in, and took nine major pieces of jewellery from the crowns of France; the Crown of Empress Eugénie was recovered the same day in a nearby street, damaged. Laurence des Cars, appointed in 2021 as the first woman to lead the museum, resigned on 24 February 2026, and Christophe Leribault was appointed the next day.