Louvre Museum

Many kings and queens added to the Louvre.

Each one asked builders and artists to make it bigger and grander. Much later, an architect named I. M. Pei made the glass pyramid.

The Louvre was not built all at once. Over about 800 years, kings, queens and emperors each hired architects to add new wings, courtyards and galleries. Pierre Lescot designed a Renaissance wing for François I, and painters and sculptors decorated the halls.

In 1981, France's president François Mitterrand began the Grand Louvre project, and the architect I. M. Pei designed the glass pyramid. Companies that made rigging for ships built its metal frame. A glass factory, Saint-Gobain, made extra-clear glass after two years of research. The pyramid opened on March 29, 1989.

The palace is the work of successive royal architects and artists: Pierre Lescot, whose wing (finished 1553 to 1555 under Henri II) was decorated with Jean Goujon; Philibert Delorme for the Tuileries; Jacques Lemercier, who extended Lescot's wing with the Pavillon de l'Horloge in 1639; Louis Le Vau, who completed the Cour Carrée for Louis XIV; and the group of Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun and the scientist Claude Perrault, who produced the Colonnade.

The Grand Louvre project, launched by President Mitterrand in 1981, gave I. M. Pei a central underground hall serving the three wings. Firms specialized in ships' rigging built the Pyramid's metal frame over four years of work; Saint-Gobain spent two years developing the extra-clear glass for its 2,000 m² of 21 mm glazing. Opponents criticized the design, which was inaugurated on March 29, 1989.

The Louvre has very old statues and famous paintings.

The most famous painting is the Mona Lisa. She has a small smile. She hangs behind special glass to keep her safe.

The Louvre's collections cover thousands of years and many parts of the world. Visitors can see a statue of a seated scribe from ancient Egypt, giant winged bulls from the ancient city of Khorsabad, in what is now Iraq, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a masterpiece of ancient Greek art.

The most famous painting is the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci. King François I bought it from Leonardo in 1518. Since 2005 it has hung on its own in the middle of the Louvre's largest room, in a glass case that keeps the temperature and the air just right.

The nine departments are Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities; Paintings; Sculptures; Decorative Arts; Prints and Drawings; Islamic Art (inaugurated 2012); and Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, whose new rooms are due in 2028. The museum lists among its masterpieces the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Seated Scribe, the Winged Bulls of Khorsabad, the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's Slaves.

The first museum showed works from the royal collections and from property seized from nobles who had fled. Under Napoleon, the "Musée Napoléon" added works seized during his campaigns, most of which were returned to their countries in 1815. The Egyptian department, led by Jean-François Champollion, opened in 1827. François I bought the Mona Lisa from Leonardo in 1518; since 2005 it has been shown alone in a climate-controlled glass case.

Millions of people visit the Louvre every year.

Many of them are children and young people. More than 2,000 people work there to welcome visitors and care for the art.

In 2025, 9 million people visited the Louvre. Almost half of them were under 26 years old, and 3 in 10 got in for free.

It takes a big team to run such a huge place: 2,213 people work at the museum. They include experts who study the art, workshop staff who repair it, guards who keep it safe, and firefighters on duty day and night.

The museum reports 9 million visitors in 2025, 44 percent under 26 and 30 percent admitted free. Its 2,213 employees include 69 curators, 254 curatorial staff, 103 workshop staff, 1,285 reception and security staff and 52 firefighters on duty around the clock. It runs about 10 temporary exhibitions a year and lends nearly 30,000 works to places across France.

The Louvre also manages the Musée Eugène-Delacroix in Paris and a conservation center opened in Liévin in 2019; a Louvre branch opened in Lens in 2012, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a partnership between the emirate and French museums, opened in November 2017.