The Musée du Louvre has been a museum for more than two centuries, and contains group of artworks and pieces of art impossible to equalize. This museum is very famous not only due to the art pieces it shows but also to the Louvre Palace where these pieces are exhibited and which is a piece of art itself.
The Louvre Palace
The Louvre Palace was, at its origins, a medieval fortress. This fortress was built in the 1100’s and received some additions and extensions given to it by the different monarchs who inhabited it until the 1800’s. This fortress – palace – museum is located in Paris, at the right side of the bank of the Seine, and is often seen as a point of reference dividing the north and south area of its city.
Although the Louvre Palace had rooms or areas in which the kings who inhabited it kept historical objects and artworks, it was not originally meant to be a museum. Henri VI dedicated an area of the palace for what was known as “the salle des antiques” or the antiquities room, only accessible to the king and those he would invite to it.
Becoming the Musée du Louvre
It was not until the 1970’s that the Palace slowly started becoming a museum. This happened once the palace inhabitants started choosing other buildings for living and art pices started gaining terrain within the Louvre. From that time, local artists started working about becoming the Palace in a museum by adding art works to it in order to achieve it.
This palace became a museum in the 1790’s, and is among the oldest museums of the world. Besides this, the Musée du Louvre is among the four oldest museums of Europe, being preceded by the Vatican Museum dating from 1784, the Dresden Museum from 1744 and the Ashmolean Museum from 1683.
The Musée du Louvre is divided in eight sections or departments, each one showing art pieces and works from different époques which might date from the first ancient civilizations to artworks created during the 19th century. This way, the evolution of art and the way this represents the evolution of humanity can be observed all together in this palace.