History of the Louvre museum
If you come to Paris, you won´t be able to live without visiting the largest museum in the world: Louvre Museum. Everyone is talking about this museum in the entire world, perhaps you heard one thousand and one different commentaries about it. Don´t worry, here you will understand why all those people talk and talk about this museum and we will show you some interesting information and a few tips in order to maximize your Parisian experience within the Louvre museum.
The Louvre museum was first a castle, build in the year 1190 by King Charles V, and converted into a royal palace, where kings were used to hang paintings on the walls or even accumulate artistic collections within their rooms. The building was opened to general public as a museum in 1793 for the first time, as a consequence of the French Republic. After almost a century, in 1871, the museum was damage by a fire set to the nearby Tuileries Palace during the Paris Commune, and many important masterpieces were consequently burnt. In 1989, the museum opened its famous glass pyramid, designed by Ieoh Ming Pei, as a result of a deep modernization plan.
Currently, the Louvre presents more than 70.000 square meters to visit, which is the equivalent of 10 football fields! Since the Louvre owns so many artworks, “only” 35.000 masterpieces are shown in Paris, while the rest is hidden in underground stores near the museum. To allow (the) public to also see the rest of the collections, the Louvre experience is now available in two other locations in the world: Lens (France) and Dubai (United Arab Emirates). A funny anecdote about the storage: in 2011, the Seine river flooded and, consequently, many of the masterpieces hidden had to be taken off to the exposition rooms so the museum had to be closed for a few weeks!
