This Day in History: Louvre becomes Museum

On this day in 1793 the Louvre, or “Le Grand Louvre” one of the world’s most famous museum is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government after more than two centuries as a royal palace. The Musée Central des Arts in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre is thus created.
Today, the Louvre’s collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture.
The Louvre palace was begun by King Francis I in 1546 on the site of a 12th-century fortress built by King Philip II. Francis was a great art collector, and the Louvre was to serve as his royal residence. The work, which was supervised by the architect Pierre Lescot, continued after Francis’ death and into the reigns of kings Henry II and Charles IX. Almost every subsequent French monarch extended the Louvre and its grounds, and major additions were made by Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the 17th century. They also greatly expanded the crown’s art holdings, and Louis XIV acquired the art collection of Charles I of England after his execution in the English Civil War. In 1682, he moved his court to Versailles, and the Louvre ceased to be the main royal residence.
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, many in France began calling for the public display of the royal collections. Diderot, the French writer and philosopher, was among the first to propose a national art museum for the public. Although King Louis XV temporarily displayed a selection of paintings at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750, it was not until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 that real progress was made in establishing a permanent museum.
The collection at the Louvre grew when the French army seized art and archaeological items from territory and nations conquered in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Much was returned after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, but the Louvre’s current Egyptian antiquities collections and other departments were built upon Napoleon’s conquests. The multi-building Louvre complex was completed in 1857, during the reign of Napoleon III, when two new wings were added.
In the last two decades of the Twentieth century, the museum underwent major remodeling and thousands of square meters of new exhibition space were opened, and the architect I.M. Pei’s controversial Pyramid, of steel-and-glass built in the center of the Napoleon courtyard.