The Evolution of the Louvre Through the Centuries I SLICE HISTORY

Louis XIV was only a child when the kingdom was shaken by revolts. It was only in 1652 that Regent Anne of Austria and her son were able to enter the capital. They moved into the Louvre, which was a highly fortified palace, but not necessarily a very comfortable one. The first renovations therefore consisted of providing a bit more comfort for the king and his mother. In the small gallery on the ground floor, the Queen had an apartment put in. With six rather sumptuous rooms. A few years later, Louis XIV, now 23 years old, had a reception hall built upstairs. Charles Le Brun, Louis XIV's chief painter, would decorate thousands of square meters of vaults. And to do so, he would gather a team of specialized painters and sculptors to create a grand décor. The theme of the décor was the sun god Apollo, which glorified the figure of Louis XIV. For us today, the association of Louis XIV with the sun seems perfectly natural. Nevertheless, you have to realize that it was developed at the beginning of Louis XIV's reign, right at the time when this décor was being created, essentially at the Louvre. The expansion projects continued. Inside as well as outside, the palace looked less and less like the plans of the medieval Louvre. The surface area of the small Cour Carrée grew considerably, reaching beyond the base perimeter of the original fortress foundations. By 1665, three of the four sides of the new château surrounded the huge 14,000 square meter courtyard. The east wing still had to be built, and it was the most important, since it would contain the entrance to the palace. Today you enter the Louvre from the west. The pyramid is in the Cour Napoleon. But in Louis XIV's time, that was the side with the kitchens. The main façade was the one looking out at Paris. Thus he wanted to develop the most beautiful façade one could imagine for the greatest monarch in Europe, gazing out at his city. What would come to be a masterpiece of French classicism began by triggering a battle of architects. To ensure the best possible project, Colbert, Louis XIV's Minister of Arts, consulted numerous French as well as foreign architects. To start, he chose the most famous European artist of the day, which was Bernini. Bernini made several proposals. He came to France to get his project started, and he laid the first stone. But as soon as he left, everything ground to a halt. Everything stopped because the project didn't seem convincing enough to Colbert. He felt it wasn't adapted to French standards. The project that was finally settled upon was the colonnade, designed by a consortium of French architects consisting of Charles Lebrun, Claude Perrault, and Louis Le Vau. Le Vau and Perrault composed a classical façade that was extremely sober, extremely elegant, and particularly immense with a colonnade that joined two floors. And two floors at the Louvre Palace was already quite large. It was an act worthy of the Sun King. The large façade, stretching nearly 175 meters long, is structured by Corinthian columns 13 meters high. Despite the monumental entrance, Louis XIV chose to move to Versailles, leaving the Louvre half-finished. Certain walls lacked floors and ceilings. When the king moved out in 1682, only the Tuileries had been completed. The question then arose what to do with the palace when the king no longer comes to visit. The Louvre underwent a radical change of vocation and became a temple of art. Academies of painting and sculpture moved into the royal apartments and organized exhibitions. The idea of a museum, which grew slowly under the ancient regime, would finally become a reality 100 years later with the French Revolution. August 10th, 1792. Thousands of revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries, the seat of royal power and symbol of the absolute monarchy. By the end of this bloody day, the mob had taken over the palace to govern there. The First Republic was born. With the revolution, there was a sort of division between the two palaces. The Tuileries once again became the seat of power. Over at the Louvre, cultural activities remained very important. Part of the Louvre palace was transformed into a museum. On August 10th, 1793, the Central Museum of the Republic's Arts was inaugurated in the Grande Galerie. Under the monarchy, works were exhibited so the public could see them. But under the revolution, a different notion emerged, the idea that the works belonged to the people. That's a major difference. There were 600 paintings displayed in rather basic conditions in a gallery with green painted walls and a poor quality floor. It was the start of the Louvre, but at the same time, it was a very small start. A small start compared to the tidal wave of works that filled the museum a year after its opening. Thousands of works flowed in from all over Europe. The countries conquered by the Republic's armies were cleaned out. Aristocrats and clergy robbed of their finest collections. The Louvre's renewed challenge was to find thousands of square meters of space to accommodate all the newly acquired paintings and sculptures. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France. He took up residence in the Tuileries, where the main pathway was crowned with the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel. The new emperor's ambition was to fulfill the grand design. He wanted to succeed where the kings before him had failed. For Napoleon, the Louvre and the Tuileries were an important issue. He lived in the Tuileries, so he had the Louvre right out his window, but also because throughout the 18th century, criticism toward the monarchy had developed for their failure to complete the Louvre. The Tuileries and the Louvre were linked to the south by Henry IV's Grande Galerie, but Napoleon also wanted to connect the two palaces to the north with a second gallery. But the emperor was confronted with another reality. The presence of neighborhoods all around the Louvre. You can't think of the Louvre as it is today, very open with lots of space around it. It was actually inserted into a series of inns and houses that were pressing right up along the façades. And when Napoleon arrived, he really decided to fit into this palace. Napoleon I began major construction work and demolished numerous houses in order to build his north gallery. Starting in 1807, a first half was built, measuring 200 meters. In the Cour Carrée, the work that had stopped under Louis XIV was finally completed. Ceilings were finally put in and the façades were ornately sculpted. The work carried out at the beginning of the 19th century would have a major impact on the architectural history of the palace. Napoleon's architects, Percier and Fontaine, came up with a new style, neoclassicism, which would inspire many of their successors. Percier and Fontaine, for the first time, would set up a very rich decor as opposed to what had been seen under the revolution, which was quite simple. So there was gold, bronze, marble, and also some materials like stone. Noble materials, as well as impressive columns, were the trademarks of Percier and Fontaine's style. Their aim was to impress through beauty and grandeur of the constructions. And it was no coincidence that Napoleon I decided to celebrate his second wedding in the Grande Galerie, newly renovated by his architects. It was a long path for the wedding procession to walk down, through the Grande Galerie. We can see during the wedding the close ties between the collections, the museum, and the life of the empire and the emperor. The museum was enhanced by the emperor's conquests, and Napoleon could stage himself in this artistic decor. At the time, the Mona Lisa was already a resident. On display in the Grande Galerie, she had a front-row seat for the proceedings. This auspicious period for the empire and the museum wouldn't last. In 1815, the defeat of Napoleon's armies led to the definitive collapse of his regime. Victors throughout Europe demanded the immediate restitution of their pillaged works. In 1852, Napoleon III, at the head of the Second Empire, wanted to complete the grand design devised by Henry IV 250 years ago. He decided to turn the Louvre into an immense palace with a museum worthy of its collections. He had an ambitious project, which was to complete the north wing begun by Napoleon I. He would increase room for lodging, as well as the life of the court, plus for government and the museum, which was continually growing. There wasn't much time. The work had to be completed for the First World's Fair, which would be held in Paris in three years' time. To meet the challenge, the emperor entrusted the work to architect Visconti, then Le Fuel. He would succeed where others had failed. What made this possible was France's great economic health at the time, and also the new industrialization of architecture, which made it possible to manage a huge worksite. With the arrival of the railroad, for the first time, stones for the Louvre were brought in from a more distant quarry, in Lorraine. Three thousand workers toiled round the clock in shifts, seven days a week, to build the final pieces of the puzzle. The two palaces that had been erected in a totally independent and separate manner, because of the densely developed Paris districts between them, would finally be joined. And that was a small miracle. The final houses were demolished and two wings were built. The Louvre was a complete enclosure. In its center, a large courtyard, the Cour Napoléon. Like his predecessors, architect Le Fuel had to integrate his new Louvre into the architecture of past centuries. While the bulk of the work was completed in 1855, they now had to fill out the additional 21,000 square meters. Le Fuel began his Herculean task with the construction of monumental staircases. The Molien staircase, the Daru staircase, which was greatly modified later on. Stairs that were meant for movement, but also as places of display, with a highly original decor. The stairways served the sumptuous reception halls of his State Department, as well as the 132 rooms of the museum, decorated and outfitted to receive the greatest masterpieces. As for Le Fuel, one could take issue with his decorative load, but he always perfectly mastered the very large scale of the Louvre. At the Louvre, the first floor is 10 meters high. That's eight times the height of a room in a fine chateau, or Parisian private mansion. It's absolutely gigantic. By adding these final rooms to the ensemble, Napoleon III created a vast palatial domain of 210,000 square meters. But fate had something else in store for the Louvre. No sooner was it completed in 1871, than a huge intentional fire destroyed the Tuileries Palace, leaving the Louvre gazing out at an immense 25 hectare garden. In 1925, the museum underwent a small revolution with its new director, Henri Vergne. Upon his arrival, Vergne wanted to modernize the institution, and above all, unify it. Until that time, the Louvre Museum was actually the Louvre Museums in the plural. We would talk about the Egyptian Museum, the Assyrian Museum, the Painting Museum. It had been individualized to the point where there were several separate entrances. Henri Vergne created underground passageways so visitors could move from wing to wing without having to leave the museum. A more fluid path, where the collections were also better organized by theme and chronological order. Henri Vergne was also the time when electricity was installed in the palace. One of his concerns was that people who worked during the day could also come to the Louvre and enjoy it and learn from it. Though Vergne's plan was interrupted during World War II, it would remain forever engraved in people's minds. The Grand Louvre project launched by François Mitterrand and Jacques Long really crystallized a particular moment. The political desire to join up with a history that was underway. As with every transformation for the past eight centuries, the renovations for the Grand Louvre project promised to provide quite a challenge. The goal was to once more give the museum an entrance and edifice worthy of its collections. The Louvre, an enormous museum in the making, with the complex architecture of a palatial domain built over 800 years. That's what I.M. Pei inherited in the 1980s when he proposed to build a pyramid right in the middle of the Cour Napoléon. The Louvre pyramid had to conserve a perception of the Louvre Palace in its whole, whereas it's a contemporary work. That was a rather delicate exercise. A new battle awaited the architect, a technological one. The pyramid had to be completely transparent. No such structure had ever been built before. Everything had to be invented from scratch, starting with the glass comprised of 673 panels. We were looking for glass that was like the glass that is used when you make a wine glass or when you make spectacles. That's called white glass. But it was not available in any quantity for what we needed. Transparency was a real challenge since glass naturally has a slight green tint. A color produced by the iron content in sand, the main component of glass. My father said, you cannot have that green color. I don't want the facades of the Louvre be distorted by any color at all. To satisfy Pei's dreams of grandeur and beauty, the Saint-Gobain glass manufacturer reduced the iron content. But there was a problem. Their traditional gas furnaces weren't adapted. The 1500°C temperature was too high for this new, more transparent glass. We had to use a different process. We heated the glass with electricity. That gave us more control over the temperature and heat diffusion inside the furnace. In April 1986, after a year and a half of research, Saint-Gobain presented the glass fresh from their new electric furnace. The life-sized sample was put on display in the Cour Napoléon, in the very spot where the pyramid was to stand. It worked, and the order was approved. Another challenge awaited the manufacturer. Production. December 1986. Saint-Gobain launched the fabrication of 673 panels that would compose the pyramid. We're a heavy industry. We make slabs of glass sheets. But here we were asked to provide individual units, finished units, fashioned like in silversmithery. To satisfy the architect's high demands, workers scrutinized the 3,800 square meters of glass. Initially, the transparent glass sheets were placed on stands where they could be examined for any flaws. It was a very serious business. The glass sheets were then cut into rhombus-shaped segments of 3 by 1.9 meters, then glued together 2 by 2 with a light plastic film to create a double glazing. They needed to think about safety. In other words, laminated glass. In the event of breakage, the glass holds together like a car windshield. The new laminated double glass segments, 21.5 millimeters thick, were then glued rather than bolted into an aluminum frame. That was another innovative process at the time, which allowed us to create perfectly smooth facades. The total weight of the 673 glass and aluminum panels, 105 tons. Quite a load to bear. Another technical challenge awaited Pei's teams. The structure of the pyramid. Pei didn't want his pyramid to obstruct the view of the Louvre Palace. Though the extra transparent glass helped with this, he also had to think of the structure of the glass walls. We had to innovate, because the structure of the pyramid is a totally innovative structure that had not existed before. Pei's team settled on a framework made of stainless steel, a quintessential light, yet solid material. There were conventional ways to do the pyramid structure, but they would have made it look like a prison. Big iron beams criss-crossing together. And we looked at a space frame. It was a very difficult study in a context where, although we did have computers and calculation capacity, it was nevertheless computer technology from the late 80s. Inside the glass pyramid, the structure echoes the rhombus-shaped grid. The strung cables and bars perpendicular to the glass are able to bear the incredible load of the glass panels. To develop the system, the engineers turned to yacht technology. We were able to develop a system which is basically the way you hold the mast of a yacht up. We have one pole that is in compression, and then cables that are very slender that hold it from tipping over, that take it in tension. With this ingenious system applied to the pyramid, Pei achieved the impossible feat of a structure that is both solid and transparent. In January 1988, the 95-ton steel structure, which took nine months to put in place, was ready to accommodate the 105 tons of rhombus-shaped panels of glass and aluminum. The pyramid, chiseled like a diamond in the Cour Napoléon, was now part of the scenery. The Louvre Pyramid is architectural audacity at the service of heritage. Beneath the pyramid, a vast underground lobby finally gave the Louvre its heart and lungs. Nine meters deep, its walls are clad in stone, like the foundations of the palace surrounding it. We wanted to use materials that were related to the materials that all of Paris is built with, and that the Louvre Palace is built with. I spent over a year going to meet people in quarries in France, both in the Burgundy region, in the Chablis region, to find the right kind of stone. It's just beautiful, very hard, will last a long, long time. The smooth white concrete ceiling was developed to meet the same strict demands. It took a year and a half of trials in order to hit on the right formula. We used a special mix where we used this dust powder from the same stone we were using in the stone walls to give it that color. We used white cement so it didn't change the color. Here, in this temple of art, I. M. Pei continued to play with geometric shapes. The straight lines of the escalators contrast with the spiral staircase winding around the cylindrical elevator. I. M. said, you must not see it when it's not there. So we had to invent an elevator that we'd never seen before. To meet Pei's demands, the engineers designed an elevator based on the principle of a piston that retracts into a 13-meter deep well. The constructors had to build a large, deep well, a waterproof well, with a piston that then rises slowly out of the well. And so there is a platform on the end of the piston that goes up and takes you up, glides magically up, and then a little platform automatically comes out of the piston to create a bridge. That was a tour de force. When the elevator is all the way up, it fills the central space of the staircase, but when the platform goes back down to the lobby, it disappears entirely. Decked out in all its finery, the Louvre Pyramid opens its doors on March 29, 1989. It was nice because the criticism, there were still some people probably who didn't want to see it there, but it was there and people were liking it. And I felt strongly about this, that the pyramid should be sensed that it was a shelter over something more important. While the glass pyramid had become the emblematic symbol of the Grand Louvre, the transformation of the palace was not yet complete. A major renovation awaited the architects, the development of the Richelieu Wing with its 49,000 square meters. An area previously devoted to the Ministry of Finance and not adapted to a museum space in the least. It had always been used for administration, so there were mezzanine offices with a height of just three meters. Museum rooms need to be six, seven or eight meters high. The building was transformed from seven levels into four large stories. The construction site was spectacular. It was an exceptionally huge worksite. We gutted the building of the Richelieu Wing, keeping only the exterior facades. It was one single volume. We broke all the floors. Only Napoleon III's apartments were conserved. Everything else had to be rebuilt. A custom design in keeping with the artworks to be displayed here. The former ministry courtyard was transformed into a sculpture gallery and many levels of terraces were created. The space was covered with a glass canopy that led natural light in while protecting the artworks. We needed to develop a thin framework so the sculptures wouldn't be hacked up by shadows when there was sun. By using relatively thin cables and tubes, the shadows created are very slight and vague. They don't ruin the view of the sculptures. In all, 165 new rooms were created. To move from floor to floor, Pei imposed, like his predecessors, his own modern-day stairway, the Richelieu Escalator. To make sure that they didn't look too much like escalators in a supermarket, we placed them between two stone walls, created a space with direct overhead natural lighting. It's an architectural element, not merely an element for moving about. The inauguration of the Richelieu wing in 1993 did not mark the end of the renovations. The Grand Louvre continued its extension below the Carousel Gardens with the creation of a parking lot and a shopping center. The centerpiece of the new development, the inverted pyramid. The pyramid is a geometrical form adapted to loads and weightlessness. But an inverted pyramid doesn't rest on the ground. Unlike the pyramid of the entrance where the glass is supported, here the glass is suspended. The glass needs to be held, otherwise it falls. The construction of the Grand Louvre also involved the development of the Tuileries Gardens. The restoration of 11 hectares of facades, the renovation of the Louvre school and the decorative arts museum. Two institutions independent from the Louvre museum but which have also kept traces of architecture from the former palaces. The Grand Louvre is an extraordinary operation which for 15 years could have been perceived, or at least by myself as a young architect perceived it, at one time as a completion. But not at all. The Grand Louvre has already been extended. And of the 360,000 square meters of floor space that make up the Louvre Palace, the museum still has quite a few spots in need of renovation. The Louvre. An indisputable site of historical interest. Within these walls, 800 years of French history but also 800 years of architecture and art history. From the infrastructures of the original fortifications to the glass pyramid, we have the complete synthesis of technical and ornamental expertise of French architecture. An open book. In its quest for space and fluidity, the museum has dug tunnels, knocked down walls and recovered entire portions of the palace. A largely successful gamble yet an insufficient one. Pei's Louvre was designed for 5 million visitors but in no time we were up to 10. What will it be in 15 years? 25 million? More challenges for the Louvre of the 21st century and new transformations in view. I think that the Louvre will continually change. You know, the changes will never stop.