Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1661 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. Colbert worked to increase France's colonial holdings. Colbert worked to develop the domestic economy by raising tariffs and by encouraging major public works projects, to ensure that the French East India Company had access to foreign markets, so that they could always obtain coffee, dyewoods, fur and sugar. In addition, Colbert founded the French merchant marine. Colbert's market reforms included the foundation of the Manufacture royale de glaces de miroirs in 1665 to supplant the importation of Venetian glass and to encourage the technical expertise of Flemish cloth manufacturing in France, he founded royal tapestry works at Gobelins and supported those at Beauvais. Colbert issued more than 150 edicts to regulate the guilds. Colbert's father and grandfather were merchants in his birthplace of France, he claimed to have Scottish ancestry. A general belief exists that he spent his early youth at a Jesuit college, working for a Parisian banker.
Before the age of 20, Colbert had a post in the war office, a position attributed to the marriage of an uncle to the sister of Secretary of War Michel le Tellier. Colbert spent some time as an inspector of troops becoming the personal secretary of Le Tellier. In 1647, through unknown means, Colbert acquired the confiscated goods of Pussort. In 1648, he and his wife Marie Charron, received 40,000 crowns from an unknown source. In 1657, he purchased the Barony of Seignelay. Colbert was recommended to King Louis XIV by Mazarin. While Cardinal Mazarin was in exile, Louis' trust in Colbert grew. In 1652 Colbert was asked to manage the affairs of the Cardinal; this new responsibility would detach Colbert from his other responsibility as commissaire des guerres. Although Colbert was not a supporter of Mazarin in principle, he would defend the cardinal's interests with unflagging devotion. Colbert's earliest recorded attempt at tax reform came in the form of a mémoire to Mazarin, showing that of the taxes paid by the people, not one-half reached the King.
The paper contained an attack upon the Superintendent Fouquet. The postmaster of Paris, a spy of Fouquet's, read the letter, leading to a dispute which Mazarin attempted to suppress. In 1661, Mazarin died and Colbert "made sure of the King's favour" by revealing the location of some of Mazarin's hidden wealth. In January 1664 Colbert became the Superintendent of buildings. In short, Colbert acquired power in every department except that of war. A great financial and fiscal reform at once claimed all his energies. Not only the nobility, but many others who had no legal claim to exemption, paid no taxes. Supported by the young king Louis XIV, Colbert aimed the first blow at the man accused of being the greatest of the royal embezzlers, the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet's fall secured Colbert's own advancement. With the abolition of the office of superintendent and of many other offices dependent upon it, the supreme control of the finances became vested in a royal council; the sovereign functioned as its president.
His ruthlessness in this case, dangerous precedent though it gave, seemed necessary. When he had punished guilty officials, he turned his attention to the fraudulent creditors of the government. Colbert had a simple method of operation, he repudiated some of the public loans and cut off from others a percentage, which varied, at first according to his own decision, afterwards according to that of the council that he established to examine all claims against the state. Much more serious difficulties met his attempts to introduce equality in the pressure of the taxes on the various classes. To diminish the number of the privileged proved impossible, but Colbert resisted false claims for exemption, lightened the unjust direct taxation by increasing the indirect taxes, from which the privileged could not escape. At the same time he immensely improved the mode of collection on his own, his relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing and bringing the economy back from the brink of bankruptcy.
Historians note that, despite Colbert's efforts, France became impoverished because of the King's excessive spending on wars. Having thus introduced a measure of order and economy into the workings of the government, Colbert now called for the enrichment of the country by commerce; the state, through Colbert's dirigiste policies, fostered manufacturing enterprises in a wide variety of fields. The authorities established new industries, protected inv
Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts - École supérieure des Arts de la Ville de Bruxelles, in Dutch Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Brussel, is the Belgian art school, established in Brussels in the Kingdom of Belgium. It was founded in 1711. At the beginning housed in a single room in the city hall, in 1876 the school moved to a former convent and orphanage in the Rue du Midi, rehabilitated by the architect Pierre-Victor Jamaer, where the school still operates; the Bombardment of Brussels by French troops in 1695 was the most destructive event in the history of this town. After the reconstruction of the Grand Place in Brussels there was a turning point for the history of art in the Netherlands. In 1711 the City of Brussels gave. One room in the city hall was freed; the guilds of painting, sculpture and other art areas should have its own training center. On October 16 of the same year the establishment of a new school took place. Model was the Accademia del Designo to Florence. In 1752 they moved to the hostel d'Golden Head.
In 1762 the Duke Charles Alexander of Lorraine took over the school after a long crisis. Henceforth, their line was in his hands, his attention rested on the architecture. In 1768 Barnabé Guimord established the first architecture class. Through sales and issue of shares additional funds were made available. A year the school returned to the town hall. In 1795, the Academy was closed after the conquest of Brussels by the French revolutionary troops. In 1829 the school moved into the Granvelle Palace on. One year François-Joseph Navez became director. There was new life in the Académie, while the sculpture has been promoted, he expanded it. In 1832 it went to the basement of the left wing of the Industrial Palace. From 1835 til 1836 the plans of Navez were implemented. In 1836 it was awarded the privilege to wear "royale" as part of their name; the panel painting was declared to another important department. This was based on the old painting of the first golden age of Dutch painting. However, there was some time tensions at the Academy to the yet propagated Style of Neo-Classicism.
In addition to painting and sculpture architectural education became more important. Only they never achieved the status of a pioneering training facility. In 1876 the Academy moved to the school buildings in the Rue du Midi, it is the building of the former monastery Boogaard. The architect Pierre-Victor Jamaer was able to link the whole school in the limited space of the existing ensemble; the facade was redesigned by the architectural style of classicism. Till today this academy is here. From 5 January 1889 women were allowed to participate in a class for advanced students. At the end of the 19th century was the founding of the modern LUCA Campus Sint-Lukas Brussels a strong competition. Meanwhile, ARBA is one of the 16 art schools of the French Community of Belgium. Under the director Charles van der Stappen the doctrine came to this university to an greater prestige. Literature and photography were part of the training offer. In the European art scene around the turn of the century Brussels drew forth in addition to his training center in the shadow of Paris.
Since 1889 Brussels was the uncrowned capital of Art Nouveau in the architecture, which had its triumphal procession through Prof. Horta; the Academy managed the step to another center of the avant-garde in the panel painting. From the Academy and its students went influence on the development of Realism, the Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Post Impressionism and the newly incipient Expressionism. Everything was precursor of Modern Art. In the year 1912 Victor Horta had made changes to the organisation of this school. A system of studios was created, as it was recommended by Paul Lambot. In 1936 the Royal Order was made to the formation of the separate Department of Architecture. In 1949 the rank of a small department for planning and urban development was established, too; the architectural studies got the rank of university education. In 1972, the Department of artistic humanities was established. At last in 1977 the Department of Architecture had acquired its autonomy. In 1977 the Institute Supérieur d'Architecture Victor Horta, named after the Art Nouveau architect and former director, was founded.
In 1980, the higher education of the second degree and new courses at the Academy of Fine Arts are presented. Today programs are offered for Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in the fields of design and media and offered doctoral studies, too; the Academy has been an ESA with a university orientation. In addition, it is part of Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium RASAB, founded in 2001, it is responsible for the task of promoting activities of the affiliated members and organizations here and coordinate. - Her tasks include projects at home and abroad. Includes some of the most famous names in Belgian painting and architecture: James Ensor, René Magritte, Paul Delvaux, creator of The Smurfs, Kali Barnabé Guimard, architect Tilman-François Suys, architect François-Joseph Navez, Belgian neo-classical painter. Louis Gallait, painter Eugène Simonis, sculptor Jean-François Portaels, Belgian painter Charles van der Stappen, sculptor Jef Lambeaux, sculptor Jacques van Lalaing and painter Victor Horta, architect Paul Saintenoy, architect Alfred Bastien, sculptor Léon Devos, painterThe school is sometimes confused with the Royal
Pierre Julien
Pierre Julien was a French sculptor who worked in a full range of rococo and neoclassical styles. He served an early apprenticeship at Le Puy-en-Velay, near his natal village of Saint-Paulien at the École de dessin of Lyon entered the Parisian atelier of Guillaume Coustou the Younger. In 1765 he won a Prix de Rome for sculpture with a bas-relief panel of a subject from Antiquity and entered the École royale des élèves protégés, which offered a special course of study under the direction of the painter Louis-Michel van Loo, he was a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome, 1768 to 1773, where he was influenced by the tide of neoclassicism that affected his fellow students. As pensionnaires were expected to do, he sent back to France a marble copy from the Antique reduced in scale, of the so-called Cleopatra, the Vatican's Sleeping Ariadne, which remains at Versailles. On his return to France and his former master, he worked on the sculpture for the mausoleum of Louis, le Grand Dauphin in the cathedral of Sens.
After a failed try in 1776, with his Ganymede, he was received by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1778, with a Dying Gladiator for his morceau de réception He was named one of the original members of the Institut de France, 1795, a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, 1804. He received commissions from the comte d'Angiviller, director of the Bâtiments du Roi, on behalf of Louis XVI for figures in a suite of life-size portraits of the great men of France: he realized a Jean de La Fontaine and a Nicolas Poussin, whom he elected to represent in his nightclothes, approximating the draperies of a Roman toga. While fulfilling commissions in Paris, for the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, or at the Pavillon de Flore of the Louvre, he sculpted in 1785 a virtuoso marble ensemble of the nymph Amalthea and the goat that nurtured Jupiter for the Queen's fastidiously-appointed Dairy at the Château de Rambouillet. Bas-reliefs from the Laiterie, reckoned among his masterpieces, were sold at auction in 1819, but were retrieved by the State in 2005, thanks to a gift from the son of the great dealer-collector Daniel Wildenstein.
Gladiateur mourant, marble, 1779, Musée du Louvre. Ganymède versant le nectar à Jupiter changé en aigle, marble group, 1776–1778, musée du Louvre Jean de La Fontaine, marble, 1783-85. Musée du Louvre Nicolas Poussin, marble, 1789 - 1804. Musée du Louvre Nicolas Poussin terracotta sketch model, about 1787 - 1788. Musée du Louvre Amalthée et la chèvre de Jupiter, marble group, 1787 for the Laiterie at Rambouillet. Laiterie de la Reine at Rambouillet La Jeune fille à la chèvre, terracotta statuette, 1786. Musée du Louvre Sainte Geneviève rendant la vue à sa mère, terracotta bas-relief, 1776. Musée du Louvre Michael Preston Worley, 2003. Pierre Julien: Sculptor to Queen Marie-Antoinette; the first modern monograph. Exhibition Catalogue. Gilles Grandjean and Guilhem Scherf. "Pierre Julien 1731-1804". Le Puy-en-Velay, France: Musée Crozatier, 2004. Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Julien Grove Dictionary of Art on-line excerpts Pierre Julien in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau, better known as Antoine Watteau, was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air; some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian ballet. Watteau was born in October 1684 in the town of Valenciennes which had passed from the Spanish Netherlands to France, his father, Jean-Philippe Watteau, was a roofer given to brawling. Showing an early interest in painting, Jean-Antoine may have been apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gérin, a local painter. Jean-Antoine's first artistic subjects were charlatans selling quack remedies on the streets of Valenciennes. Watteau left for Paris in 1702. There he found employment in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition.
By 1705 he was employed as an assistant by the painter Claude Gillot, whose work represented a reaction against the turgid official art of Louis XIV's reign. In Gillot's studio Watteau became acquainted with the characters of the commedia dell'arte, a favorite subject of Gillot's that would become one of Watteau's lifelong passions. Afterward he moved to the workshop of Claude Audran III, an interior decorator, under whose influence he began to make drawings admired for their consummate elegance. Audran was the curator of the Palais du Luxembourg, where Watteau was able to see the magnificent series of canvases painted by Peter Paul Rubens for Queen Marie de Medici; the Flemish painter would become one of his major influences, together with the Venetian masters he would study in the collection of his patron and friend, the banker Pierre Crozat. In 1709 Watteau was rejected by the Academy. In 1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy.
He took five years to deliver the required "reception piece", but it was one of his masterpieces: the Pilgrimage to Cythera called the Embarkation for Cythera. Watteau lacked aristocratic patrons. Among his most famous paintings, beside the two versions of the Pilgrimage to Cythera, one in the Louvre, the other in the Schloss Charlottenburg, are Pierrot, Fêtes venitiennes, Love in the Italian Theater, Love in the French Theater, "Voulez-vous triompher des belles?" and Mezzetin. The subject of his hallmark painting, Pierrot, is an actor in a white satin costume who stands isolated from his four companions, staring ahead with an enigmatic expression on his face. Watteau's final masterpiece, the Shop-sign of Gersaint, exits the pastoral forest locale for a mundane urban set of encounters. Painted at Watteau's own insistence, "in eight days, working only in the mornings... in order to warm up his fingers", this sign for the shop in Paris of the paintings dealer Edme François Gersaint is the final curtain of Watteau's theatre.
It has been compared with Las Meninas as a meditation on illusion. The scene is an art gallery where the façade has magically vanished, the gallery and street in the canvas are fused into one contiguous drama. Watteau alarmed his friends by a carelessness about his future and financial security, as if foreseeing he would not live for long. In fact he had been physically fragile since childhood. In 1720, he travelled to London, England, to consult Dr. Richard Mead, one of the most fashionable physicians of his time and an admirer of Watteau's work. However, London's damp and smoky air offset any benefits of medicines. Watteau returned to France and spent his last few months on the estate of his patron, Abbé Haranger, where he died in 1721 from tuberculous laryngitis, at the age of 36; the Abbé said Watteau was semi-conscious and mute during his final days, clutching a paint brush and painting imaginary paintings in the air. His nephew, Louis Joseph Watteau, son of Antoine's brother Noël Joseph Watteau, grand nephew, François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, son of Louis, followed Antoine into painting.
Little known during his lifetime beyond a small circle of his devotees, Watteau "was mentioned but in contemporary art criticism and usually reprovingly". Sir Michael Levey once noted that Watteau "created, the concept of the individualistic artist loyal to himself, himself alone". If his immediate followers and Pater, would depict the unabashed frillery of aristocratic romantic pursuits, Watteau in a few masterpieces anticipates an art about art, the world of art as seen through the eyes of an artist. In contrast to the Rococo whimsicality and licentiousness cultivated by Boucher and Fragonard in the part of Louis XV's reign, Watteau's theatrical panache is tinged with a note of sympathy and sadness at the transience of love and other earthly delights. Famously, the Victorian essayist Walter Pater wrote of Watteau: "He was always a seeker after something in the world, there in no satisfying measure, or not at all."Watteau was a prolific draftsman. His drawings executed in trois crayons technique, were collected and admired by those, such as Caylus or Gersaint, who found fault wit
Louvre Palace
The Louvre Palace is a former royal palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. A fortress built in the medieval period, it became a royal palace in the fourteenth century under Charles V and was used from time to time by the kings of France as their main Paris residence, its present structure has evolved in stages since the 16th century. In 1793 part of the Louvre became a public museum, now the Musée du Louvre, which has expanded to occupy most of the building; the present-day Louvre Palace is a vast complex of wings and pavilions on four main levels which, although it looks to be unified, is the result of many phases of building, modification and restoration. The Palace is situated in the right-bank of the River Seine between Rue de Rivoli to the north and the Quai François Mitterrand to the south. To the west is the Jardin des Tuileries and, to the east, the Rue de l'Amiral de Coligny, where its most architecturally famous façade, the Louvre Colonnade, the Place du Louvre are found.
The complex occupies about 40 hectares and forms two main quadrilaterals which enclose two large courtyards: the Cour Carrée, completed under Napoleon I, the larger Cour Napoléon with the Cour du Carrousel to its west, built under Napoleon III. The Cour Napoléon and Cour du Carrousel are separated by the street known as the Place du Carrousel; the Louvre complex may be divided into the "Old Louvre": the medieval and Renaissance pavilions and wings surrounding the Cour Carrée, as well as the Grande Galerie extending west along the bank of the Seine. Some 51,615 sq m in the palace complex are devoted to public exhibition floor space; the Old Louvre occupies the site of the Louvre castle, a 12th-century fortress built by King Philip Augustus called the Louvre. Its foundations are viewable in the basement level as the "Medieval Louvre" department; this structure was razed in 1546 by King Francis I in favour of a larger royal residence, added to by every subsequent French monarch. King Louis XIV, who resided at the Louvre until his departure for Versailles in 1678, completed the Cour Carrée, closed off on the city side by a colonnade.
The Old Louvre is a quadrilateral 160 m on a side consisting of 8 ailes which are articulated by 8 pavillons. Starting at the northwest corner and moving clockwise, the pavillons consist of the following: Pavillon de Beauvais, Pavillon de Marengo, Northeast Pavilion, Central Pavilion, Southeast Pavilion, Pavillon des Arts, Pavillon du Roi, Pavillon Sully. Between the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon Sully is the Aile Lescot: built between 1546 and 1551, it is the oldest part of the visible external elevations and was important in setting the mould for French architectural classicism. Between the Pavillon Sully and the Pavillon de Beauvais is the Aile Lemercier: built in 1639 by Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, it is a symmetrical extension of Lescot's wing in the same Renaissance style. With it, the last external vestiges of the medieval Louvre were demolished; the New Louvre is the name given to the wings and pavilions extending the Palace for about 500 m westwards on the north and on the south sides of the Cour Napoléon and Cour du Carrousel.
It was Napoléon III who connected the north end of the Tuileries Palace with the Louvre in the 1850s, thus achieving the Grand Dessein envisaged by King Henry IV of France in the 16th century. This consummation only lasted a few years, however, as the Tuileries was burned in 1871 and razed in 1883; the northern limb of the new Louvre consists of three great pavilions along the Rue de Rivoli: the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque, Pavillon de Rohan and Pavillon de Marsan. On the inside of the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque are three pavilions; the southern limb of the New Louvre consists of five great pavilions along the Quai François Mitterrand: the Pavillon de la Lesdiguieres, Pavillon des Sessions, Pavillon de la Tremoille, Pavillon des États and Pavillon de Flore. As on the north side, three inside pavilions and their wings define three more subsidiary Courts: Cour du Sphinx, Cour Visconti and Cour Lefuel; the Chinese American architect I. M. Pei was selected in 1983 to design François Mitterrand's Grand Louvre Project.
A vast underground complex of offices, exhibition spaces, storage areas, parking areas, as well as an auditorium, a tourist bus depot, a cafeteria, was constructed underneath the Louvre's central courtyards of the Cour Napoléon and the Cour du Carrousel. The ground-level entrance to this complex was situated in the centre of the Cour Napoléon and is crowned by the prominent steel-and-glass pyramid, the most famous element designed by Pei. In a proposal by Kenneth Carbone, the nomenclature of the wings of the Louvre
