visit of the Louvre museum !

✈️This week, the Alliance Française takes you to visit Louvre Museum!

Arguably the most famous museum in the world, the Louvre has had an interesting history in Paris. With 10 million visitors per year, it is the most visited museum in the world. Here are some facts about this museum with a worldwide reputation.

General incredible facts

15,000 people visit the Louvre each day. In addition to being the most visited museum in the world, the Louvre is also the largest.So big, in fact, that you can hardly imagine sharing the space with 15,000 other visitors at any given time. It is impossible, as a human being, to see the entire Louvre Museum in a single day. In fact, even a month of exploring this space would not be enough. If you were to devote 30 seconds to each work of art in the Louvre, it would take you 100 consecutive days to go through them all. And that's without sleep, without breaks, and without meals15,000 people visit the Louvre each day.

A bit of History

The Louvre was originally built as a large fortress in Paris, then transformed into a royal palace in the 16th century before becoming a museum in 1793. It was closed for a time when the infrastructure proved unsuitable for regular visitors. The history of the Louvre dates back to 1190, when it was built as a fortress by King Philip II of France to protect the city from foreigners. The fortress was completed in 1202, and in the 14th century, King Charles V made the Louvre the royal residence. It was in the midst of the riots and bloodshed of the French Revolution that the Louvre Museum was born. Once Louis XVI was imprisoned, the royal collection became national property. In 1793, the Louvre opened to the public as the Central Museum of the Arts of the Republic. At the time, the museum's collection consisted of 537 paintings and 184 objects of art. Today you can visit the foundations of the museum and see its past as a fortress

The must-have

The louvre is one of the most visited museums in the world for THE most famous painting in the world: the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci. Every day, 20,000 people are able to observe it. The painting is much smaller than you might think: it's 2′ 6″ x 1′ 9″, the size of a small bathroom mirror. Until now, the real identity of the woman drawn by Leonardo da Vinci for the famous portrait remains unknown. However, there are many theories about this mystery. The most popular one is that the woman is a certain Lisa Maria de Gherardini, a 24-year-old noblewoman born in Florence in 1479. Other hypotheses suggest that the woman in the painting corresponds to the face of Caterina Sforza, the Countess of Forli, and others say that the woman is Da Vinci's mother, because of the similarity of facial structures. The Mona Lisa has a unique power of attraction and it is impossible not to be charmed, intrigued or baffled when one meets her gaze. The mystery surrounding her smile remains.

The glass pyramid

In the Courtyard of the Louvre Museum, you can find the glass pyramid that serves as the entrance to the museum. The pyramid in question was added to the Louvre grounds only very recently, in the 1980s.It was realized by the Chinese I.M. Pei. on the order of François MitterrandThe main pyramid is now a prominent and recognizable feature of the Parisian skyline, and three smaller versions of the structure stand in the surrounding courtyard.

 

We hope to have given you the desire to visit the Louvre museum in France!