The Louvre
The Louvre is the world's most-visited art museum, located in Paris, France, housing an extraordinary collection that includes the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.
The building drawing millions of visitors a year to see the Mona Lisa began its life not as a museum at all, but as a medieval fortress guarding the edge of Paris.
From Fortress to Palace
The building that now houses the Louvre was originally constructed as a fortress in the late 12th century to defend Paris, before being gradually transformed over subsequent centuries into a lavish royal palace used by French monarchs.
Opening to the Public
The Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793, during the height of the French Revolution, displaying royal art collections that had previously been reserved exclusively for the monarchy and nobility — a powerful symbolic gesture reflecting revolutionary ideals.
An Immense Collection
The museum's collection spans thousands of years of human art and artifacts, from ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian antiquities to Renaissance masterpieces, housed across three wings totaling over 650,000 square feet of gallery space.
Home to the Mona Lisa
The Louvre's most famous holding, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, draws enormous crowds daily, with visitors often surprised by the painting's relatively modest physical size compared to its immense cultural fame.
A Modern Icon Within the Old
The museum's striking modern glass pyramid entrance, designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1989, initially drew controversy for contrasting sharply with the historic palace architecture, but has since become an iconic Parisian landmark in its own right.
