The Louvre opened as a republic's museum in 1793
What began as Philip II's medieval fortress and later a royal palace became a public gallery on 10 August 1793—exactly a year after the monarchy fell. Five hundred thirty-seven paintings, mostly seized from crown and church, launched the institution that now draws more visitors than any other museum on Earth.
Today's Louvre sits on Paris's Right Bank in the 1st arrondissement, inside a palace begun in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries under Philip II; fortress remnants still show in the basement. Francis I turned it into the kings' main residence in 1546. After Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre mainly housed royal collections—including ancient sculpture from 1692—and academies that staged salons. The Revolution's National Assembly ordered it to display the nation's masterpieces. It opened 10 August 1793 with 537 paintings, closed for structural repairs from 1796 to 1801, swelled under Napoleonic seizures (briefly as Musée Napoléon), then kept growing through later reigns—about 20,000 pieces under the Second Empire—and donations since the Third Republic. Eight departments now span Egyptian antiquities to prints.
Scale defines the brand. Roughly 500,000 objects sit in the holdings; about 35,000 works appear across more than 60,600 square meters of permanent galleries, with some 38,000 objects on view over 72,735 square meters at a time—making it the world's largest museum. It logged 9.0 million visitors in 2025, topping art museums and museums of every kind. Since 1993 the main entry funnels through the Pyramid's Hall Napoléon. Access rules flipped over centuries: early Republican décades reserved most days for artists and foreigners; later regimes rationed Sunday crowds; from 1855 the public came daily except Mondays; after 1946 Tuesday closure stuck. Cameras are allowed without flash.
Collecting began with French monarchs; Francis gathered works at Fontainebleau that later entered the museum, including Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Mid-eighteenth-century critics pushed for public display; Louis XV authorized ninety-six royal pieces at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750 before that gallery closed in 1780. In May 1791 the assembly named the palace a gathering place for monuments of science and art; after the king's imprisonment in August 1792 the royal holdings became national property. Opening day offered free entry three days a week—seen as a republican triumph—with three-quarters of works from the crown and the rest from émigré and church seizures. Armies soon shipped Northern European and Vatican trophies such as the Laocoön. The first donation arrived in 1798: Gerard Dou's Woman with Dropsy, secured by Bertrand Clauzel.
Source: Louvre
