Louvre

French art gallery, former palace of the French kings, in Paris. It was converted to an art gallery in 1793 to house the royal collections. Two of its best-known exhibits are the sculpture Venus de Milo and Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa. Today the gallery comprises seven sections: ancient, Oriental, Egyptian, painting, sculpture, applied arts, and drawing.

The controversial main entrance of the Louvre, a vast glass structure in the shape of a pyramid, was designed by I M Pei and opened in 1989. All the main galleries are reached from this point, which is viewed as one of the most successful adaptations in modern architecture.

The Louvre was erected on the site of a 13th-century château. The first part of the modern structure, the southwest wing, was built in 1541 after the designs of Pierre Lescot; the main portion of the square was built by Louis XIV, after the design by Claude Perrault, though the building was not completed until the 19th century.

After the building of the palace of the Tuileries, the Louvre proper became a series of great galleries filled with paintings, sculptures, and Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, connected to the Tuileries by a vast picture gallery overlooking the Seine (444 m/1457 ft long). Between the two palaces lay the Place du Carrousel. Napoleon III further connected the two palaces on the north side, thus making them into one vast palace. The fire started by the Communards in 1871 destroyed the Tuileries palace but burnt only that corner of the Louvre which contained the library. Today the Louvre is known as the largest national gallery in the world.