46 Fun Facts About Louvre

Which part of central Paris is home to the Louvre?

The Right Bank is the Louvre's home: the site lay on the western edge of medieval Paris, where a fortress beside the river could guard the city against attack from the west.

Which French king began the Louvre as a fortress in the late 12th century?

Philip II, known as Philip Augustus, built the fortress around 1190 to guard the city against attack from Normandy, then held by the English kings; its foundations survive in the basement.

Which king began rebuilding the medieval Louvre as a Renaissance palace in 1546?

Francis I hired the architect Pierre Lescot in 1546 to turn the old fortress into a Renaissance palace, but died the next year, leaving his son Henry II to see the new wing built.

The Grand Larousse traces the name Louvre to a word for what?

A wolf-hunting den is the Grand Larousse's reading, from Latin lupus, wolf; other scholars propose quite different roots, so the origin is still disputed.

Louis XIV abandoned the Louvre for which palace in 1682?

Versailles became the seat of the court in 1682; the Louvre was left to the royal collections and, from 1692, to the academies, which held exhibitions there.

Which event turned the Louvre from a royal palace into a public museum?

The French Revolution made the royal art collection national property, and the museum opened in 1793, a year to the day after the monarchy fell.

In 1803 the Louvre was renamed in honour of whom?

Napoleon, then First Consul, lent his name to the Musée Napoléon in 1803; its director Vivant Denon filled it with art seized across Europe, much of it returned after 1815.

Which Louvre wing, running along the rue de Rivoli, housed France's Ministry of Finance until 1989?

The Richelieu wing held the Ministry of Finance until it moved to Bercy in 1989; the Grand Louvre project then turned its offices into galleries, which opened in 1993.

Which duo filmed a 2018 music video inside the Louvre?

Beyoncé and Jay-Z shot their video in the galleries, posing before the Mona Lisa; the Louvre said interest in it helped draw a record 10.2 million visitors that year.

Which French president launched the Grand Louvre project in 1981?

Francois Mitterrand announced the Grand Louvre in September 1981, months after taking office; the project cleared the Finance Ministry out of the north wing and added the glass entrance by 1989.

The Louvre Pyramid's glass took two years of research to make it what?

Perfectly clear glass was the architect's demand, so that the old palace fronts could be admired through the pyramid; the Saint-Gobain works needed two years to develop it.

What occupied the Louvre's central courtyard before the glass pyramid was built there in the 1980s?

Gardens and a car park: museum and ministry staff parked around two small 19th-century gardens until the Grand Louvre dig replaced them with the pyramid and the lobby beneath it.

Which architect designed the Louvre Pyramid?

I. M. Pei was chosen personally by the French president in 1983, on the strength of the museum wings he had built in Boston and Washington; his glass pyramid opened in March 1989.

On what material is the Mona Lisa painted?

White poplar panel is the support, and it has caused trouble: the wood has warped over the centuries and a crack runs down from the top edge, so the picture is kept in a climate-controlled case.

Which Leonardo painting in the Louvre shows Mary seated on her mother's lap?

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne was still unfinished when Leonardo died; a 2011 cleaning left it so much brighter that two experts resigned from the Louvre's advisory committee in protest.

Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?

Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian workman who had helped build the picture's glass case, walked out with it in August 1911; Apollinaire was arrested and Picasso questioned before the thief was found.

How was the Mona Lisa's thief finally caught in 1913?

Offering it to a Florence art dealer undid him: the dealer brought the Uffizi's director to authenticate the picture, and the police then arrested the thief at his hotel.

On what day of the week was the Mona Lisa stolen in 1911?

Monday, the weekly closing day, meant only staff and workmen were about; the thief left by a service door, and nobody raised the alarm until a painter came to copy the picture the next day.

What Guinness World Record does the Mona Lisa hold?

Highest insurance valuation: the Mona Lisa was assessed at 100 million dollars before its 1962 trip to America, but the policy was never bought because tight security cost less than the premiums.

In 1956 a Bolivian visitor damaged the Mona Lisa by throwing what at it?

A rock thrown by Ugo Ungaza Villegas in December 1956 shattered the glass and dislodged a speck of pigment near the left elbow; bulletproof glass was installed afterwards.

Where was the Mona Lisa hidden when war threatened in 1938-39?

Chateau de Chambord took in the Mona Lisa as convoys emptied the Louvre in the last days of August 1939; it was later moved on to other hiding places and came home in 1945.

The Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 by whom?

A Greek farmer uncovered the statue while digging on Milos in April 1820; a French sailor who was watching urged him to keep going, and France bought it before a rival buyer could carry it off.

Based on a marble hand found beside her, what was the Venus de Milo thought to be holding?

An apple held in a marble hand found with the statue suggests the Judgement of Paris, in which Aphrodite won the golden apple; whether the hand belongs to her is debated.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace stands on a base shaped like what?

The prow of a ship: its grey marble blocks were left on Samothrace in 1863 as the remains of a tomb, and reached the Louvre only in 1879, after Austrian archaeologists worked out what they formed.

Where in the Louvre does the Winged Victory of Samothrace stand?

Atop a grand staircase: the Louvre set her on the Daru stairs' upper landing in the 1880s, a nod to the height on Samothrace from which she once looked out over the sanctuary.

How did the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi stele end up in Iran?

As war spoils: an Elamite king is thought to have carried the stele off to Susa some 600 years after it was carved, and French archaeologists dug it up there in pieces.

The Louvre's Seated Scribe, carved in Egypt some 4,500 years ago, sits cross-legged with what on his lap?

A papyrus scroll lies half-unrolled on his kilt, and a hole in one hand shows where a reed pen once sat; his inlaid crystal eyes still look startlingly alive.

Which Egyptologist became the first curator of the Louvre's Egyptian collection in the 1820s?

Jean-Francois Champollion had cracked the hieroglyphs in 1822; as curator he pressed Charles X to buy the collections of Henry Salt and Bernardino Drovetti, the core of today's department.

Which huge Veronese canvas, plundered from a Venetian monastery by French troops, is the Louvre's largest painting?

The Wedding at Cana was taken from the monks' refectory in Venice; in 1815 France kept it, arguing that it was too fragile to travel, and sent Venice a painting by Le Brun in exchange.

The frigate in Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa ran aground in 1816, bound for Senegal, off which coast?

Mauritania's coast is where the frigate struck a sandbank under a captain who had scarcely sailed in 20 years; nearly 150 people were left on a raft, and only 15 were alive when rescue came 13 days later.

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People commemorates which uprising?

The July Revolution of 1830 put a new king on the throne, and his government bought the picture, then took it down within months and kept it out of sight for years.

What did David first paint in his 1804 coronation picture before changing it?

Napoleon holding the crown above his own head was David's first version, and its outline can still be made out on the canvas; he repainted the scene as the emperor crowning Josephine.

How did thieves get into the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon in the October 2025 jewel heist?

By a truck-mounted lift: dressed as building workers, the thieves rode it up to a first-floor balcony, cut through the window with power tools and were gone again within minutes.

Which royal headpiece was dropped and damaged by the thieves in the October 2025 heist?

The crown of Empress Eugenie was crushed as the thieves dragged it through a hole cut in its case, then dropped in the street outside; the Louvre's director called its restoration delicate but possible.

Which adjoining royal residence did Communards burn down on 23 May 1871, with the fire reaching the Louvre?

The Tuileries, the palace joined to the Louvre's western wings, burned for two days after Communards set it alight; the fire spread into part of the Louvre itself, and the ruins were razed in 1883.

The Louvre's satellite museum opened in 2012 in which former coal-mining town of northern France?

Lens was chosen in 2004 in the hope of reviving a depressed mining community, and the museum was built on the site of one of the town's old pits.

Who designed the Louvre Abu Dhabi, inaugurated in November 2017 with a vast perforated dome?

Jean Nouvel modelled the 180-metre dome on an oasis palm grove: its 7,850 metal stars break the sunlight into a shifting 'rain of light'.

Which handheld games console served as the Louvre's official audio guide from 2012?

Nintendo 3DS consoles became the museum's audio guides in 2012; Nintendo then built a full Louvre guide for them, which Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated from the galleries.

In the film The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail's resting place turns out to lie beneath which Louvre landmark?

The Inverted Pyramid, a glass skylight in the shopping centre under the Louvre, is where the film ends; the museum earned a reported 2.5 million dollars by letting the crew shoot in its galleries.

Which president ordered the Louvre's Department of Islamic Art created in 2003?

Jacques Chirac created the department by decree in 2003; nine years later its treasures moved out of a basement into a courtyard roofed with an undulating golden veil of glass and metal.

Which Louvre nude by Ingres has a back several vertebrae too long?

Grande Odalisque was painted in 1814 for Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples; by different counts her back has two to five vertebrae too many, a distortion Ingres made on purpose.

What is the underground space beneath the glass pyramid, opened in 1989, called?

Hall Napoléon lies under the Cour Napoléon, a courtyard laid out for Napoleon III in the 1850s; it was dug so that a single lobby could feed all three wings of the museum.

Which Michelangelo marble in the Louvre was carved for Pope Julius II's tomb?

The Dying Slave and its companion, the Rebellious Slave, were cut from the tomb as its plans shrank; Michelangelo gave both to a Florentine friend, who passed them to the French king.

Which looted Venetian bronzes crowned the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel from 1808 to 1815?

The Horses of Saint Mark, seized from Venice by French troops, stood on the arch until their return in 1815; Venice had itself looted them from Constantinople in 1204.

Since 1986, Louvre paintings made after 1848 have hung in which other Paris museum?

The Musée d'Orsay, opened in a converted railway station in 1986, took over the Louvre's later 19th-century art, which is why the Impressionists hang there and not in the Louvre.

The Louvre's colossal human-headed winged bulls once guarded a palace of which ancient empire?

Assyria: the bulls flanked the gates of King Sargon II's palace at Khorsabad, and each was carved with five legs so that it stands still from the front and strides from the side.