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163-503: Marguerite Stern (née Fould) (1866–1956) was a French Jewish art collector whose property was seized by Nazis during the occupation of Paris . Born in 1866 into the French Jewish bourgeoisie as the daughter of Henri Fould and Suzette Stern, Fould married into the Stern banking dynasty of which her husband Edgard Stern (1854–1937) was part. During the occupation of France by Nazi Germany,

326-656: A glass pyramid in the Louvre's central Cour Napoléon . The open spaces surrounding the pyramid were inaugurated on 15 October 1988, and its underground lobby was opened on 30 March 1989. New galleries of early modern French paintings on the 2nd floor of the Cour Carrée , for which the planning had started before the Grand Louvre , also opened in 1989. Further rooms in the same sequence, designed by Italo Rota , opened on 15 December 1992. On 18 November 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated

489-802: A German naval officer, Alfons Moser, in the back, as he was boarding the metro at the Barbés-Rochecouart station . The Germans had routinely taken hostages among the French civilian population to deter attacks. They responded to the Barbés-Rochechouart metro attack by executing three hostages in Paris, and another twenty the following month. Hitler was furious at the leniency of the German commander, and demanded that in case of future assassinations, there must be one hundred hostages executed for every German killed. After

652-452: A Resistance network that smuggled Jews from France to Argentina. He collected a large advance from his clients and then instructed them to come to his house, bringing their gold, silver and other valuables with them. After they arrived, he brought them to his consulting room, and, convincing them vaccination was required in order to enter Argentina, gave them a lethal intravenous injection, then watched their slow death in an adjacent room through

815-573: A bi-monthly magazine and guide for visiting German soldiers Der Deutsche Wegleiter für Paris (The German Guide to Paris), was first published by the Paris Kommandantur . Certain hotels and movie theaters were reserved exclusively for German soldiers. A German-language newspaper, the Pariser Zeitung (1941–1944), was also published for the soldiers. The German officers enjoyed the Ritz , Maxim's ,

978-569: A brawl. A German soldier was punched. Bonsergent's friends escaped, but he was arrested and refused to give the names of his friends to the Germans. He was held in jail for nineteen days, taken to court, charged with "an act of violence against a member of the German Army", and sentenced to death. Bonsergent was executed by firing squad on 23 December, the first civilian in France executed for resistance against

1141-583: A consequence, the works were removed after Louis-Philippe was deposed in 1848, and were eventually auctioned away in 1853. The short-lived Second Republic had more ambitions for the Louvre. It initiated repair work, the completion of the Galerie d'Apollon and of the salle des sept-cheminées , and the overhaul of the Salon Carré (former site of the iconic yearly Salon ) and of the Grande Galerie. In 1848,

1304-524: A firing squad. As a consequence of the demonstration, the Sorbonne University was closed, students were required to regularly report to the police, and the Latin Quarter was closely watched. Another incident took place on 10 November; a 28-year-old French engineer named Jacques Bonsergent and his friends, coming home from a wedding, ran into a group of German soldiers in the blackout and got into

1467-463: A floral Cross of Lorraine , the symbol of de Gaulle's Free France. They were chased away by the police. At nightfall, the event became more provocative; some three thousand students gathered, chanting "Vive La France" and "Vive l'Angleterre", and invading Le Tyrol , a bar popular with the Jeune Front , a fascist youth group, and scuffling with police. At 6:00 pm, German soldiers arrived, surrounded

1630-462: A good pork chop, hidden under cabbage and served without the necessary tickets, along with a liter of Beaujolais and a real coffee; sometimes it was on the first floor at rue Dauphine, where you could listen to the BBC while sitting next to Picasso." The restrictions and shortage of goods led to the existence of a thriving black market . Producers and distributors of food and other scarce products set aside

1793-541: A hero of the First World War , as deputy prime minister. Neither Weygand nor Pétain felt the Germans could be defeated, and they began looking for a way out of the war. On 8 June, the sound of distant artillery fire could be heard in the capital. Trains filled with refugees departed Gare d'Austerlitz with no announced destination. On June 10th, the French government fled Paris, first to Tours and then to Bordeaux . Thousands of Parisians followed their example, filling

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1956-560: A more focused museum of French, Western and Near Eastern art, covering a space ranging from Iran to the Atlantic. The collections of the Louvre's musée mexicain were transferred to the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1887. As the Musée de Marine was increasingly constrained to display its core naval-themed collections in the limited space it had in the second-floor attic of the northern half of

2119-567: A new ceiling for the Salle des Bronzes (the former Salle La Caze ), a counterpoint to that of Braque installed in 1953 in the adjacent Salle Henri II . The room's floor and walls were redesigned in 2021 by Louvre architect Michel Goutal to revert the changes made by his predecessor Albert Ferran in the late 1930s, triggering protests from the Cy Twombly Foundation on grounds that the then-deceased painter's work had been created to fit with

2282-653: A new organization, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce ( Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg ) was created to catalog and store the art. It was moved to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume , a building in the Tuileries Gardens used by the Louvre for temporary exhibits. More than four hundred crates of art works were brought to the Jeu de Paume by Luftwaffe personnel, unpacked and cataloged. Hermann Göring ,

2445-620: A new section of the museum complex located in a suite of lavishly decorated rooms on the first floor of the South Wing of the Cour Carrée. The Egyptian collection, initially curated by Jean-François Champollion , formed the basis for what is now the Louvre's Department of Egyptian Antiquities . It was formed from the purchased collections of Edmé-Antoine Durand , Henry Salt and the second collection of Bernardino Drovetti (the first one having been purchased by Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia to form

2608-472: A portion of their goods for the black market, and used middle-men to sell them to customers. The bars of the Champs-Élysées, and other parts of Paris, became common meeting places between the middle-men and clients. Parisians bought cigarettes, meat, coffee, wine and other products which frequently neither the middle-man nor the customer had ever seen. Due to the shortage of fuel, the number of automobiles on

2771-611: A spyhole in the door. Afterwards, he cut up their bodies, put the pieces in the well, and dissolved them with quicklime. His activities attracted the attention of the Gestapo, which arrested him in 1943, thus allowing him to claim later that he had been a real member of the Resistance. His crimes were discovered after the Liberation in 1944, and he was charged with the murders of twenty-seven persons, tried in 1946, and sentenced to death. He went to

2934-587: A systematic scholarly approach to the understanding of Marx and Marxism, which he perceived to be needed. For the Parisians, the Occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was initiated in September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and

3097-455: A tank on the roof, or coal gas or methane, extracted from the Paris sewers. The metro ran, but service was frequently interrupted and the cars were overcrowded. Three thousand five hundred buses had run on the Paris streets in 1939, but only five hundred were still running in the autumn of 1940. Bicycle-taxis became popular, and their drivers charged a high tariff. Bicycles became the means of transport for many Parisians, and their price soared;

3260-507: A tour to Berlin, in exchange for the liberation of her husband, Porfirio Rubirosa , a Dominican diplomat suspected of espionage. The actress Arletty , the star of Les Enfants du Paradis and Hôtel du Nord , had a relationship with Hans Jürgen Soehring, a Luftwaffe officer, and gave the famous riposte to a member of the FFI interrogating her after the Liberation: "My heart is French, but my a--

3423-456: A used bicycle cost a month's salary. Transportation problems did not end with the liberation of Paris; the shortage of gasoline and lack of transport continued until well after the war. One of the greatest art thefts in history took place in Paris during the Occupation, as the Nazis looted the art of Jewish collectors on a grand scale. Great masterpieces in the Louvre had already been evacuated to

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3586-441: A very difficult existence due to shortages of personnel, film and food, but it produced several genuine masterpieces, among which: Marcel Carné 's Les Enfants du Paradis ("Children of Paradise") which was filmed during the Occupation but not released until 1945. From the very beginning of the Occupation, Jews in Paris were treated with particular harshness. On October 18th, 1940, the German occupation authorities decreed, in what

3749-500: A villa in Royan , north of Bordeaux. He returned to Paris and resumed working in his studio on rue des Grands Augustins . He frequently received visitors at his studio, including Germans, some admiring and some suspicious. He had postcards made of his famous anti-fascist work, Guernica , to hand out as souvenirs to visitors, and had serious discussions of art and politics with visiting Germans, including writer Ernst Jünger . While his work

3912-469: Is international." ' Jewish actors were not allowed to perform. Some places in Paris were frequented by homosexual actors and artists; notably the swimming pool in the Bois de Boulogne . The actor Jean Marais was officially harassed for his homosexuality, and the actor Robert-Hugues Lambert was arrested and deported, most likely because of his relationship with a German officer whom he did not want to name. He

4075-576: Is known as the Ordonnance d'Aryanisation , that Jews would have a special status and be barred from liberal professions, such as commerce, industry, thus affecting lawyers, doctors, professors, shop owners, and also be barred from certain restaurants and public places, and that their property was seized. On May 23rd, 1942, the head of the Anti-Jewish section of the Gestapo , Adolf Eichmann , gave secret orders for

4238-513: Is permitted inside, but flash photography is forbidden. Beginning in 2012, Nintendo 3DS portable video game systems were used as the official museum audio guides. The following year, the museum contracted Nintendo to create a 3DS-based audiovisual visitor guide. Entitled Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre , it contains over 30 hours of audio and over 1,000 photographs of artwork and the museum itself, including 3D views, and also provides navigation thanks to differential GPS transmitters installed within

4401-592: The Salle Henri II , next to the Salle La Caze . In the late 1960s, seats designed by Pierre Paulin were installed in the Grande Galerie . In 1972, the Salon Carré 's museography was remade with lighting from a hung tubular case, designed by Louvre architect Marc Saltet  [ fr ] with assistance from designers André Monpoix  [ fr ] , Joseph-André Motte and Paulin. In 1961,

4564-573: The Comédie Française were used to move the larger paintings, including Gericault 's Raft of the Medusa . The art works were carried in slow convoys of trucks, convoys, with headlights off to observe the blackout, to the châteaux of the Loire Valley and other designated locations. The architectural landmarks of the city were protected by sandbags. The French Army waited in the fortifications of

4727-508: The Grande Galerie and Pavillon Denon was redecorated in 1886 by Edmond Guillaume  [ fr ] , Lefuel's successor as architect of the Louvre, and opened as a spacious exhibition room. Edomond Guillaume also decorated the first-floor room at the northwest corner of the Cour Carrée , on the ceiling of which he placed in 1890 a monumental painting by Carolus-Duran , The Triumph of Marie de' Medici originally created in 1879 for

4890-493: The Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon . The expansion of the museum and its collections slowed after World War I, however, despite some prominent acquisitions such as Georges de La Tour 's Saint Thomas and Baron Edmond de Rothschild 's 1935 donation of 4,000 prints, 3,000 drawings, and 500 illustrated books. From the late 19th century, the Louvre gradually veered away from its mid-century ambition of universality to become

5053-461: The 16th arrondissement of Paris . They were known as the Carlingue (or French Gestapo) and were active between 1941 and 1944. The group was founded by Pierre Bonny , a corrupt ex-policeman. It was subsequently led by Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel , two professional criminals who had been active in the French underworld before the war. By the time that the Germans arrived in Paris, two-thirds of

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5216-704: The Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation and on a design by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti . In 2007, German painter Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work for the North stairs of the Perrault Colonnade , Athanor . This decision announces the museum's reengagement with contemporary art under the direction of Henri Loyrette , fifty years after the institution's last order to a contemporary artists, George Braque . In 2010, American painter Cy Twombly completed

5379-483: The Auschwitz extermination camp . The roundup was considered a failure by the Germans, since they had prepared trains for 32,000 persons. Arrests continued in 1943 and 1944. By the time of the Liberation, it was estimated that 43,000 Jews from the Paris region, or about half the total population of the community, had been sent to the concentration camps, and that 34,000 were murdered there. Many Parisians collaborated with

5542-563: The Austrian government for the keeping of works such as Veronese's Wedding at Cana which was exchanged for a large Le Brun or the repurchase of the Albani collection. For most of the 19th century, from Napoleon 's time to the Second Empire , the Louvre and other national museums were managed under the monarch's civil list and thus depended much on the ruler's personal involvement. Whereas

5705-635: The Austrian Monarchy . This treaty marked the completion of Napoleon's conquest of Italy and the end of the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars . It compelled Italian cities to contribute pieces of art and heritage to Napoleon's "parades of spoils" through Paris before being put into the Louvre Museum. The Horses of Saint Mark , which had adorned the basilica of San Marco in Venice after

5868-474: The Château de Valençay . On 27 August 1939, after two days of packing, truck convoys began to leave Paris. By 28 December, the museum was cleared of most works, except those that were too heavy and "unimportant paintings [that] were left in the basement". In early 1945, after the liberation of France, art began returning to the Louvre. New arrangements after the war revealed the further evolution of taste away from

6031-446: The Count of Provence (the future king, Louis XVIII) by the king in 1778. Under Louis XVI , the idea of a royal museum in the Louvre came closer to fruition. The comte d'Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed to convert the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which at that time contained the plans-reliefs or 3D models of key fortified sites in and around France – into

6194-600: The Coupole and other exclusive restaurants, as the exchange rate was fixed to favor the German occupiers. Many houses of prostitution existed in Paris and they began to cater to German clients. The headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst , the counter-intelligence branch of the SS was at 84 Avenue Foch . French auxiliaries, who worked for the Gestapo , Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei were based at 93, rue Lauriston in

6357-583: The Cour Carrée 's northern wing opened after comprehensive refurbishment. In January 2020, under the direction of Jean-Luc Martinez , the museum inaugurated a new contemporary art commission, L'Onde du Midi by Venezuelan kinetic artist Elias Crespin . The sculpture hovers under the Escalier du Midi, the staircase on the South of the Perrault Colonnade . The Louvre, like many other museums and galleries, felt

6520-649: The French Communist Party , others to General Charles de Gaulle in London. They wrote slogans on walls, organized an underground press, and sometimes attacked German officers. Reprisals by the Germans were swift and harsh. Following the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6 1944, the French Resistance in Paris launched an uprising on 19 August, seizing the police headquarters and other government buildings. The city

6683-614: The French Navy created an exhibition of ship models in the Louvre in December 1827, initially named musée dauphin in honor of Dauphin Louis Antoine , building on an 18th-century initiative of Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau . This collection, renamed musée naval in 1833 and later to develop into the Musée national de la Marine , was initially located on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's North Wing, and in 1838 moved up one level to

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6846-621: The French underworld , operated from 93, rue Lauriston . Many of its member were captured at the end of the war and executed. The Nazi security agencies also established Special Brigades under the Prefecture of Police in Paris, these units operated in accordance with the RHSA and the SS capturing resistance fighters and Allied agents, as well as rounding up Jews for deportation . Prisoners were routinely tortured by

7009-533: The Grand Louvre overhaul of the late 1980s and 1990s, the Louvre had several street-level entrances, most of which are now permanently closed. Since 1993, the museum's main entrance has been the underground space under the Louvre Pyramid , or Hall Napoléon , which can be accessed from the Pyramid itself, from the underground Carrousel du Louvre, or (for authorized visitors) from the passage Richelieu connecting to

7172-568: The Guimet Museum in 1945. Nevertheless, the Louvre's first gallery of Islamic art opened in 1893. In the late 1920s, Louvre Director Henri Verne devised a master plan for the rationalization of the museum's exhibitions, which was partly implemented in the following decade. In 1932–1934, Louvre architects Camille Lefèvre  [ fr ] and Albert Ferran redesigned the Escalier Daru to its current appearance. The Cour du Sphinx in

7335-486: The Jeu de Paume , and filling the whole ground floor. The staff at the Jeu de Paume cataloged 218 major collections. Between April 1941 and July 1944, 4,174 cases of art works filling 138 boxcars, were shipped from Paris to Germany. Much of the art, but not all, was recovered after the war. While some painters left Paris, many remained and continued working. Georges Braque returned to Paris in autumn 1940 and quietly continued working. Pablo Picasso spent most of 1939 in

7498-575: The Luxembourg Palace . Meanwhile, during the Third Republic (1870–1940) the Louvre acquired new artefacts mainly via donations, gifts, and sharing arrangements on excavations abroad. The 583-item Collection La Caze , donated in 1869 by Louis La Caze , included works by Chardin ; Fragonard , Rembrandt and Watteau . In 1883, the Winged Victory of Samothrace , which had been found in

7661-519: The Luxembourg Palace . A hall was opened by Le Normant de Tournehem and the Marquis de Marigny for public viewing of the "king's paintings" ( Tableaux du Roy ) on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Luxembourg gallery included Andrea del Sarto 's Charity and works by Raphael ; Titian ; Veronese ; Rembrandt ; Poussin or Van Dyck . It closed in 1780 as a result of the royal gift of the Luxembourg palace to

7824-620: The Maginot Line , while in Paris ration cards for gasoline were issued, restrictions were put on the sale of meat and, in February 1940, ration cards for food were issued; however, cafés and theatres remained open. The French defense plan was purely passive, waiting for the Germans to attack. After eight months of relative calm (known as the Phoney War , La drôle de guerre ) on the Western Front ,

7987-418: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on August 23rd 1939, had to reverse direction. The editors of the Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité , which had been closed down by the French government, asked the Germans for permission to resume publishing, and it was granted. The Party also asked that workers resume work in the armaments factories, which were now producing for the Germans. Many individual communists opposed

8150-412: The Opera House and viewed the Eiffel Tower from the terrace of the Palace of Chaillot , paid homage at Napoleon's tomb, and visited the artist's quarter of Montmartre . During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and the flag of Nazi Germany flew over all the French government buildings. Signs in German were placed on the main boulevards, and the clocks of all France were reset to

8313-485: The Schorfheide Forest in Germany. Another Rothschild-owned painting, The Astronomer by Vermeer , was reserved for Hitler himself. Fifteen railroad boxcars full of artworks were sent to Germany with Göring's personal train. Göring visited the Jeu de Paume twelve more times in 1941, and five times in 1942, adding to his collection. Confiscations continued at banks, warehouses and private residences, with paintings, furniture, statues, clocks and jewelry accumulating at

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8476-444: The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe . The event was also announced on the 10th on the BBC. The day began quietly, as some 20,000 students laid wreaths and bouquets at the tomb and at the statue of Georges Clemenceau , on Place Clemenceau , by the Champs Élysées . This part of the day was tolerated by the French and German authorities. At midday, the demonstration became more provocative; some students carried

8639-406: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and cultural heritage . It was closed for six months during French coronavirus lockdowns and saw visitor numbers plunge to 2.7 million in 2020, from 9.6 million in 2019 and 10.2 million in 2018, which was a record year. In preparation for the 2024 Olympics , the Louvre staged an exhibit about the Games' history that links their ancient beginnings to

8802-464: The yellow Star of David badge , and were barred from certain professions and public places. On July 16–17 1942, 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children, were rounded up by the French police , on orders of the Germans, and were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp . The first demonstration against the occupation, by Paris students, took place on November 11 1940. As the war continued, anti-German clandestine groups and networks were created, some loyal to

8965-415: The "French Museum". Many design proposals were offered for the Louvre's renovation into a museum, without a final decision being made on them. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution. The Louvre finally became a public museum during the French Revolution. In May 1791, the National Constituent Assembly declared that the Louvre would be "a place for bringing together monuments of all

9128-445: The 10.1 million visitors it received in 2018. The Louvre is the most-visited museum in the world , ahead of the Vatican Museums . The Louvre museum is located inside the Louvre Palace , in the center of Paris, adjacent to the Tuileries Gardens . The two nearest Métro stations are Louvre-Rivoli and Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre , the latter having a direct underground access to the Carrousel du Louvre commercial mall. Before

9291-461: The 14th century, Charles V converted the building from its military role into a residence. In 1546, Francis I started its rebuilding in French Renaissance style. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, construction works slowed to a halt. The royal move away from Paris resulted in the Louvre being used as a residence for artists, under Royal patronage. For example, four generations of craftsmen-artists from

9454-411: The 2nd-floor attic , where it remained for more than a century. Following the July Revolution , King Louis Philippe focused his interest on the repurposing of the Palace of Versailles into a Museum of French History conceived as a project of national reconciliation, and the Louvre was kept in comparative neglect. Louis-Philippe did, however, sponsor the creation of the musée assyrien to host

9617-412: The Aegean Sea in 1863, was prominently displayed as the focal point of the Escalier Daru . Major artifacts excavated at Susa in Iran, including the massive Apadana capital and glazed brick decoration from the Palace of Darius there, accrued to the Oriental (Near Eastern) Antiquities Department in the 1880s. The Société des amis du Louvre was established in 1897 and donated prominent works, such as

9780-440: The Boulle family were granted Royal patronage and resided in the Louvre. Meanwhile, the collections of the Louvre originated in the acquisitions of paintings and other artworks by the monarchs of the House of France . At the Palace of Fontainebleau , Francis collected art that would later be part of the Louvre's art collections, including Leonardo da Vinci 's Mona Lisa . The Cabinet du Roi consisted of seven rooms west of

9943-400: The Cour Carrée, many of its significant holdings of non-Western artefacts were transferred in 1905 to the Trocadéro ethnography museum, the National Antiquities Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye , and the Chinese Museum in the Palace of Fontainebleau . The Musée de Marine itself was relocated to the Palais de Chaillot in 1943. The Louvre's extensive collections of Asian art were moved to

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10106-412: The Finance Ministry accepted to leave the Pavillon de Flore at the southwestern end of the Louvre building, as Verne had recommended in his 1920s plan. New exhibition spaces of sculptures (ground floor) and paintings (first floor) opened there later in the 1960s, on a design by government architect Olivier Lahalle. In 1981, French President François Mitterrand proposed, as one of his Grands Projets ,

10269-522: The French police. Unmarried persons and couples without children were taken to Drancy , some 20 kilometers north of Paris, while 8,160 men, women and children comprising families went to the Vélodrome d'Hiver ("Vel' d'Hiv'") stadium, on rue Nelaton in the 15th arrondissement , where they were crowded together in the heat of summer, with hardly any food, water and no hygienic facilities for five days before being sent to Drancy , Compiègne , Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps, preludes to

10432-409: The Galerie d'Apollon on the upper floor of the remodeled Petite Galerie. Many of the king's paintings were placed in these rooms in 1673, when it became an art gallery, accessible to certain art lovers as a kind of museum. In 1681, after the court moved to Versailles, 26 of the paintings were transferred there, somewhat diminishing the collection, but it is mentioned in Paris guide books from 1684 on, and

10595-451: The German military at Fort Mont Valérien. Acts of resistance in Paris became more dangerous. In the spring of 1942, five students of the Lycée Buffon decided to protest the arrest of one of their teachers. About one hundred students took part, chanting the teacher's name and throwing leaflets. The demonstrators escaped, but the police tracked down and arrested the five student leaders, who were tried and executed on February 8, 1943. As

10758-413: The German time. The German military high command moved into the Majestic Hotel on Avenue Kléber ; the Abwehr (German military intelligence), took over the Hôtel Lutetia ; the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) occupied the Ritz ; the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), the Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde ; the Carlingue , the French auxiliary organization of the Gestapo , occupied

10921-399: The Germans and many of them made their way to Germany ( Sigmaringen ) when Paris fell to the Allies. Those who did not leave were the target of the purge ( épuration ) that followed. The most notorious criminal of the period was Doctor Marcel Petiot . Petiot purchased a house at 21 rue Le Sueur in the 16th arrondissement , and under the name of Docteur Eugène , pretended to be the head of

11084-432: The Germans struck France on May 10th 1940, bypassing the Maginot Line and slipping through the Ardennes . By May 15th, German panzer divisions were only 35 kilometers from Laon , in the rear of the French and British armies, racing toward the English Channel . On May 28th, the British realized the battle was lost and began withdrawing their soldiers from the beaches of Dunkerque . Paris was soon flooded with refugees from

11247-489: The Germans. Very few heard the broadcast at the time, but it was widely printed and circulated afterwards. On 23 June, the German occupation authorities ordered all French persons to turn in any weapons and short-wave receivers they possessed, or face severe measures. Within Paris, opposition was isolated and slow to build. On 2 August, de Gaulle was condemned to death for treason, in absentia , by Marshal Pétain's new government. The first illegal demonstration in Paris against

11410-452: The Government of Marshal Pétain and with the Germans, assisting them with city administration, the police, and other government functions. French government officials were given the choice of collaborating or losing their jobs. On September 2, 1941, all Paris magistrates were asked to take an oath of allegiance to Marshal Petain. Only one, Paul Didier , refused. Unlike the territory of Vichy France , governed by Marshal Pétain and his ministers,

11573-452: The Grand Louvre plan to relocate the Finance Ministry , until then housed in the North Wing of the Louvre, and thus devote almost the entire Louvre building (except its northwestern tip, which houses the separate Musée des Arts Décoratifs ) to the museum which would be correspondingly restructured. In 1984 I. M. Pei , the architect personally selected by Mitterrand, proposed a master plan including an underground entrance space accessed through

11736-479: The Italians and their artistic and cultural sensibilities. After the French defeat at Waterloo , the looted works' former owners sought their return. The Louvre's administrator, Denon, was loath to comply in absence of a treaty of restitution. In response, foreign states sent emissaries to London to seek help, and many pieces were returned, though far from all. In 1815 Louis XVIII finally concluded agreements with

11899-569: The Louvre conducted an elaborate plan of evacuation of its art collection . When Germany occupied the Sudetenland , many important artworks such as the Mona Lisa were temporarily moved to the Château de Chambord . When war was formally declared a year later, most of the museum's paintings were sent there as well. Select sculptures such as Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo were sent to

12062-519: The Louvre, upon a recommendation from his friend the art collector and dealer Jacques Kerchache  [ fr ] . On his initiative, a selection of highlights from the collections of what would become the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac was installed on the ground floor of the Pavillon des Sessions and opened in 2000, six years ahead of the Musée du Quai Branly itself. The main other initiative in

12225-459: The Naval Museum in the Cour Carrée's attic was brought under the common Louvre Museum management, a change which was again reversed in 1920. In 1850 under the leadership of curator Adrien de Longpérier , the musée mexicain opened within the Louvre as the first European museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art . The rule of Napoleon III was transformational for the Louvre, both the building and

12388-528: The Nazis, but the ambivalent official attitude of the Party lasted until Operation Barbarossa , the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941. The Ukrainian-Jewish Marxist historian , Maximilien Rubel , was living semi-secretly in Paris, and was astonished by the level of ignorance shown by Marxist members of the resistance that he met, and in consequence he introduced the term " Marxologie " to refer to

12551-795: The Normandy invasion approached, the Communists and their allies controlled the largest and best-armed resistance groups in Paris: the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP). In February 1944, the FTP became part of a larger umbrella organization, the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI). Following the Normandy invasion on June 6 (D-Day), the FFI prepared to launch an uprising to liberate

12714-482: The Occupation took place on November 11th 1940, the anniversary of the end of the First World War , a day that usually featured patriotic ceremonies of remembrance. Anticipating trouble, the German authorities banned any commemoration and made it a regular school and work day. Nonetheless, the students of Paris lycées (high schools) circulated handbills and leaflets calling for students to boycott classes and meet at

12877-520: The Occupation. In 1946, the metro station Jacques Bonsergent was named after him. The first significant Resistance organization in Paris was formed in September 1940 by a group of scholars connected with the Musée de l'Homme , the ethnology museum located at the Palais de Chaillot . On December 15th, using the museum mimeograph machine, they published Résistance , a four-page newspaper which gave its name to

13040-471: The Paris streets dropped from 350,000 before the war to just under 4,500. One customer, sitting on the terrace of a café on the Place de la Bourse , counted the number of cars which passed between noon and twelve-thirty: only three came by. Older means of transportation, such as the horse-drawn fiacre came back into service. Trucks and automobiles that did circulate often used gazogene, a poor-quality fuel carried in

13203-502: The Parisians toward the occupiers varied greatly. Some saw the Germans as an easy source of money; others, as the Prefect of the Seine, Roger Langeron (arrested on June 23rd 1940), commented, "looked at them as if they were invisible or transparent." The attitude of members of the French Communist Party was more complicated; the Party had long denounced Nazism and Fascism, but after the signing of

13366-482: The Parisians, particularly those in the wealthier neighborhoods, had fled to the countryside and the south of France, in what is known as the exode de 1940 , the massive exodus of millions of people from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the north and east of France, fleeing after the German victory of the battle of Sedan (May 12th– May 15th 1940). Once the Occupation had begun, they started to return. By July 7th,

13529-513: The South Wing was covered by a glass roof in 1934. Decorative arts exhibits were expanded in the first floor of the North Wing of the Cour Carrée , including some of France's first period room displays. In the late 1930s, The La Caze donation was moved to a remodeled Salle La Caze above the salle des Caryatides , with reduced height to create more rooms on the second floor and a sober interior design by Albert Ferran. During World War II ,

13692-514: The Special Brigades. The Germans supported the creation by Vichy France, on February 28th 1943, of a fascist paramilitary organization, the Front révolutionnaire national , whose active police branch was called Milice . Its particular function was to help the Germans in their battle against the Resistance, which they qualified as being a "terrorist" organization. It established its headquarters in

13855-647: The Stern and Fould families were persecuted unter antisemitic laws due to their Jewish origins. Their property, including artworks, was looted. After the war, some of the artworks were restituted. However others were returned to France but instead of being returned to Fould-Stern, entered France's national MNR inventories. In 2020 France's Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin , restituted seven artworks that had belonged to Fould-Stern to her heirs. Paris in World War II Jews in Paris were forced to wear

14018-862: The Vatican, had opened in November 1800 in Anne of Austria 's former summer apartment, located on the ground floor just below the Galerie d'Apollon. On 19 November 1802, Napoleon appointed Dominique Vivant Denon , a scholar and polymath who had participated in the Egyptian campaign of 1798–1801, as the museum's first director, in preference to alternative contenders such as antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti , painter Jacques-Louis David , sculptor Antonio Canova and architects Léon Dufourny or Pierre Fontaine . On Denon's suggestion in July 1803,

14181-809: The actor Fernandel , the film director and playwright Sacha Guitry , and the singers Édith Piaf , Tino Rossi , Charles Trenet and Yves Montand . The jazz musician Django Reinhardt played with the Quintette du Hot Club de France for German and French fans. In 1941, Maurice Chevalier performed a new revue in the Casino de Paris : Bonjour Paris . The songs Ça sent si bon la France and La Chanson du maçon became hits. The Nazis asked Chevalier to perform in Berlin and sing for Radio Paris . He refused but did perform for French prisoners of war in Germany, and succeeded in obtaining

14344-526: The adjoining halls, in what is now the Richelieu Wing, were separately destroyed. But the museum was saved by the efforts of Paris firemen and museum employees led by curator Henry Barbet de Jouy . Following the end of the monarchy, several spaces in the Louvre's South Wing went to the museum. The Salle du Manège was transferred to the museum in 1879, and in 1928 became its main entrance lobby. The large Salle des Etats that had been created by Lefuel between

14507-613: The aftermath of the Grand Louvre project was Chirac's decision to create a new department of Islamic Art, by executive order of 1 August 2003, and to move the corresponding collections from their prior underground location in the Richelieu Wing to a more prominent site in the Denon Wing. That new section opened on 22 September 2012, together with collections from the Roman-era Eastern Mediterranean, with financial support from

14670-504: The battle zone. On June 3rd, the Germans bombed Paris and its suburbs for the first time, targeting in particular the Citroën automobile factory. 254 persons were killed, including 195 civilians. French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud dismissed his supreme military commander, Maurice Gamelin , and replaced him with the 73-year-old Maxime Weygand . He also named the 84-year-old Philippe Pétain ,

14833-457: The building at 93 rue Lauriston ; and the German commandant of Paris and his staff moved into the Hôtel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli . Paris became the primary destination for the rest and recreation of German soldiers. Under the slogan "Jeder einmal in Paris" ("everyone once in Paris"), each German soldier was promised one visit to Paris. One month after the beginning of the Occupation,

14996-689: The building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture , which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution , the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings,

15159-455: The building. Between 1852 and 1870, the museum added 20,000 new artefacts to its collections. The main change of that period was to the building itself. In the 1850s architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel created massive new spaces around what is now called the Cour Napoléon , some of which (in the South Wing, now Aile Denon) went to the museum. In the 1860s, Lefuel also led

15322-630: The châteaux of the Loire Valley and the unoccupied zone , and were safe. The German Army was respectful of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and refused to transfer the works in French museums out of the country, but the Nazi leaders were not so scrupulous. On 30 June 1940, Hitler ordered that all art works in France, public and private, should be "safeguarded". Many of the French wealthy Jewish families had sent their art works out of France before leaving

15485-658: The city before the Allied Armies and General de Gaulle arrived. Louvre The Louvre ( English: / ˈ l uː v ( r ə )/ LOOV( -rə) ), or the Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre [myze dy luvʁ] ), is a national art museum in Paris , France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in

15648-569: The city government estimated the population had risen again to 1.5 million; it climbed to two million by October 22nd, and 2.5 million by January 1st 1941. At the beginning of 1943, it fell again, because of air raids by the Allies, the arrest and deportation of Jews and foreigners, and the forced departure to factories in Germany of many young Frenchmen, as part of the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), "Obligatory Work Service". The attitude of

15811-574: The city to the countryside. That night, street lights were turned off as a measure against German air raids. On 1 September, news reached Paris that Germany had invaded Poland , and France as expected promptly declared war on Germany. On August 27th, in anticipation of air raids, workmen had begun taking down the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle . The same day, curators at the Louvre , summoned back from summer vacation, and aided by packers from

15974-534: The city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art , including the Mona Lisa , Venus de Milo , and Winged Victory . The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace , originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II . Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion,

16137-590: The collection, the Republic dedicated 100,000  livres per year. In 1794, France's revolutionary armies began bringing pieces from Northern Europe, augmented after the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) by works from the Vatican, such as the Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere , to establish the Louvre as a museum and as a "sign of popular sovereignty". The early days were hectic. Privileged artists continued to live in residence, and

16300-484: The collections. The Greek and Roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor of the southwestern side of the Cour Carrée was completed on designs by Percier and Fontaine . In 1819 an exhibition of manufactured products was opened in the first floor of the Cour Carrée's southern wing and would stay there until the mid-1820s. Charles X in 1826 created the Musée Égyptien and in 1827 included it in his broader Musée Charles X ,

16463-599: The core of the present Museo Egizio in Turin ). The Restoration period also saw the opening in 1824 of the Galerie d'Angoulême , a section of largely French sculptures on the ground floor of the Northwestern side of the Cour Carrée, many of whose artefacts came from the Palace of Versailles and from Alexandre Lenoir's Musée des Monuments Français following its closure in 1816. Meanwhile,

16626-449: The country, but others had left their art collections behind. A new law decreed that those who had left France just before the war were no longer French citizens, and their property could be seized. The Gestapo began visiting bank vaults and empty residences, and collecting the works of art. The pieces left behind in the fifteen largest Jewish-owned art galleries in Paris were also collected, and transported in French police vans. In September,

16789-494: The country. They were not experienced conspirators, and they were discovered and arrested in January 1941. Vildé and the six other leaders were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad at Fort Mont Valérien , in the western suburbs of the city, on February 22, 1942. Most of the resistance by ordinary Parisians was symbolic: encouraged by the BBC, students scribbled the letter V for Victory on walls, blackboards, tables, and on

16952-517: The creation of the pavillon des Sessions with a new Salle des Etats closer to Napoleon III's residence in the Tuileries Palace , with the effect of shortening the Grande Galerie by about a third of its previous length. A smaller but significant Second Empire project was the decoration of the salle des Empereurs below the Salon carré . The Louvre narrowly escaped serious damage during

17115-643: The creation on 16 June 1940 of the Ministère de l'agriculture et du ravitaillement (Ministry of Agriculture and Supply), which began to impose a system of rationing as early as August 2nd 1940, as per Décret du 30 juillet 1940 : bread, fat, flour products, rice, sugar; then, on 23 October 1940: butter, cheese, meat, coffee, charcuterie , eggs, oil; in July 1941: and as the war went on: chocolate, fish, dried vegetables, (like peas and beans), potatoes, fresh vegetables, wine, tobacco... Products could be bought only upon presentation of coupons attributed to specific items and on

17278-565: The deportation of French Jews to the concentration camp of Auschwitz . On May 29th, 1942, all Jews in the Occupied Zone over the age of six were required to wear the yellow Star of David badge . In July, Jews were banned from all main streets, movie theaters, libraries, parks, gardens, restaurants, cafés and other public places, and were required to ride on the last car of metro trains. On 16–17 July 1942, on Germans' orders, 13,152 Jews (4,115 children, 5.919 women and 3,118 men) were rounded up by

17441-612: The disposition of the German occupiers. By the end of the afternoon, the Germans had hung a swastika flag at the Arc de Triomphe and organized military parades with a marching band on the Champs Élysées and Avenue Foch , primarily for the benefit of the German army photographers and newsreel cameramen. On the evening of June 16th, Prime Minister Reynaud resigned. On the morning of June 17th, General de Gaulle left Bordeaux by plane for London. At midday, Parisians gathered around radios heard Pétain,

17604-535: The document of surrender placed Paris in the occupied zone, directly under German authority, the Militärbefehlshabers in Frankreich (MBF). It stated: "The government of France will immediately invite all the French authorities and administrative services in the occupied territories to conform with the regulations of the German military authorities, and to collaborate with those in a correct manner." The prefect of

17767-407: The first six days of which were reserved for visits by artists and foreigners and the last three for visits by the general public. In the early 1800s, after the seven-day week had been reinstated, the general public had only four hours of museum access per weeks, between 2pm and 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1824, a new regulation allowed public access only on Sundays and holidays; the other days

17930-399: The first time. In the spring of 1939, war with Germany already seemed inevitable. In Paris, the first defense exercise took place on February 2nd 1939 and city workers began digging twenty kilometers of trenches in city squares and parks to be used for bomb shelters. On 10th of March, the city began to distribute gas masks to civilians, and on March 19th, signs were posted guiding Parisians to

18093-554: The former Communist Party building at 44 rue Le Peletier and at 61 rue de Monceau . The Lycée Louis-Le-Grand was occupied as barracks, and an officer candidate school was established in the Auteuil synagogue. The Front révolutionnaire national held a large rally on April 11th 1943 at the Vél d'Hiv . At the time of the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, most of its members chose to fight alongside

18256-458: The fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings . The building was redesigned and extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692,

18419-411: The guillotine on May 25, 1946. The gold, silver and other valuables were not found when he was arrested. In search of the treasure, the house was carefully demolished in 1966, but no trace of it was ever found. On June 18th 1940, Parisians listening to the BBC heard an obscure French brigadier General, Charles de Gaulle, in London, make an appeal ( Appel du 18 juin ) to continue the resistance against

18582-455: The head of the Luftwaffe , visited the Jeu de Paume on November 3 and returned on the 5th, spending the entire day there, picking out works for his private collection. He selected twenty-seven paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Van Dyck owned by Edouard de Rothschild , as well as stained glass windows and furniture intended for Carinhall , the luxurious hunting lodge he had built in

18745-494: The idea: "To make Paris into a city of ruins will not affect the issue." On June 12th, the French government, in Tours, declared Paris to be an open city, that there would be no resistance. At 5:30 in the morning of June 14th, the first German advance guard entered the city at Porte de La Villette and took the rue de Flandres toward the center. They were followed by several German columns, which, following an established plan, moved to

18908-546: The late 12th century to protect the city from the attack from the West, as the Kingdom of England still held Normandy at the time. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre are still visible in the crypt. Whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, and it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. The origins of the name "Louvre" are somewhat disputed. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique ,

19071-453: The lavish decorative practices of the late 19th century. In 1947, Edmond Guillaume's ceiling ornaments were removed from the Salle des Etats , where the Mona Lisa was first displayed in 1966. Around 1950, Louvre architect Jean-Jacques Haffner  [ fr ] streamlined the interior decoration of the Grande Galerie . In 1953, a new ceiling by Georges Braque was inaugurated in

19234-509: The liberation of ten prisoners in exchange. The writer Colette , who was 67 when the war began, worked quietly on her mémoires in her apartment at 9 rue du Beaujolais , next to the gardens of the Palais-Royal. Her husband, Maurice Goudeket, a Jew, was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1941, and although he was released after a few months through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador Otto Abetz , Colette lived through

19397-561: The long journey by bicycle to the countryside, hoping to come back, with vegetables, fruit, eggs and other farm products. The rationing system also applied to clothing: leather was reserved exclusively for German army boots, and vanished completely from the market. Leather shoes were replaced by shoes made of rubber or canvas ( raffia ) with wooden soles. A variety of ersatz or substitute products appeared, which were not exactly what they were called: ersatz wine, coffee (made with chicory), tobacco and soap. Finding coal for heat in winter

19560-544: The majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed from 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon , after the Napoleonic looting of art in Europe, Egypt and Syria , and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon , but after Napoleon's abdication, many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection

19723-454: The monarchy's demise, as Muséum central des Arts de la République . The public was given free accessibility on three days per week, which was "perceived as a major accomplishment and was generally appreciated". The collection showcased 537 paintings and 184 objects of art. Three-quarters were derived from the royal collections, the remainder from confiscated émigrés and Church property ( biens nationaux ). To expand and organize

19886-434: The monumental Assyrian sculpture works brought to Paris by Paul-Émile Botta , in the ground-floor gallery north of the eastern entrance of the Cour Carrée. The Assyrian Museum opened on 1 May 1847. Separately, Louis-Philippe had his Spanish gallery displayed in the Louvre from 7 January 1838, in five rooms on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's East ( Colonnade ) Wing, but the collection remained his personal property. As

20049-536: The most iconic collection remained that of paintings in the Grande Galerie , a number of other initiatives mushroomed in the vast building, named as if they were separate museums even though they were generally managed under the same administrative umbrella. Correspondingly, the museum complex was often referred to in the plural (" les musées du Louvre ") rather than singular. During the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), Louis XVIII and Charles X added to

20212-474: The movement that followed. The group was led by the Russian-born (French naturalized) anthropologist Boris Vildé . The first issue of the newspaper, proclaimed: "We are independent, simply French, chosen for the action we wish to carry out. We have only one ambition, one passion, one desire: to recreate France, pure and free." They collected information and established a network to help escaped French POWs to flee

20375-416: The museum itself was renamed Musée Napoléon . The collection grew through successful military campaigns. Acquisitions were made of Spanish, Austrian, Dutch, and Italian works, either as the result of war looting or formalized by treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino . At the end of Napoleon's First Italian Campaign in 1797, the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed with Count Philipp von Cobenzl of

20538-468: The museum was open only to artists and foreigners, except for closure on Mondays. That changed in 1855 when the museum became open to the public all days except Mondays. It was free until 1922, when an entrance fee was introduced except on Sundays. Since its post- World War II reopening in 1946, the Louvre has been closed on Tuesdays, and habitually open to the public the rest of the week except for some holidays. The use of cameras and video recorders

20701-423: The museum. The upgraded 2013 Louvre guide was also announced in a special Nintendo Direct featuring Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrating it at the museum, and 3DS XLs pre-loaded with the guide are available to rent at the museum. As of August 2023, there are virtual tours through rooms and galleries accessible online. The Louvre Palace , which houses the museum, was begun by King Philip II in

20864-529: The museum. In 1852, he created the Musée des Souverains in the Colonnade Wing , an ideological project aimed at buttressing his personal legitimacy. In 1861, he bought 11,835 artworks including 641 paintings, Greek gold and other antiquities of the Campana collection . For its display, he created another new section within the Louvre named Musée Napoléon III , occupying a number of rooms in various parts of

21027-528: The name derives from an association with a wolf hunting den (via Latin: lupus , lower Empire: lupara ). In the 7th century, Burgundofara (also known as Saint Fare), abbess in Meaux, is said to have given part of her "Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris" to a monastery, even though it is doubtful that this land corresponded exactly to the present site of the Louvre. The Louvre Palace has been subject to numerous renovations since its construction. In

21190-498: The nearby La Samaritaine and Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville department stores, began cataloging and packing the major works of art, which were put into crates and labeled only with numbers to disguise their contents. The Winged Victory of Samothrace statue was carefully wheeled down the long stairway on a wooden ramp to be put on a truck for its departure to the Château de Valençay in the Indre department. Trucks used to move scenery for

21353-525: The nearby rue de Rivoli . A secondary entrance at the Porte des Lions , near the western end of the Denon Wing, was created in 1999 but is not permanently open. The museum's entrance conditions have varied over time. Prior to the 1850s, artists and foreign visitors had privileged access. At the time of initial opening in 1793, the French Republican calendar had imposed ten-day "weeks" (French: décades ),

21516-421: The nearest shelters. On August 23rd, Parisians were surprised to read that the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop , and Russian minister Vyacheslav Molotov had signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact of non-aggression. L'Humanité , the daily newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF), welcomed the pact, writing: "At the moment when the Soviet Union makes a new and appreciable contribution to safeguard

21679-464: The new head of the French government, announce: "It is with a heavy heart that I tell you today that we must cease hostilities. The fighting must stop." Though no armistice had yet been signed, the French army stopped fighting. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler arrived on June 24th for a rapid tour by car, his only visit to Paris. He was guided by the German sculptor Arno Breker and by his chief architect, Albert Speer , both of whom had lived in Paris. He saw

21842-411: The next killing of a German, forty-eight hostages were immediately shot by firing squad. From London, General de Gaulle condemned the Communist policy of random assassinations, saying the cost in innocent civilian lives was too high, and it had no impact on the war, but the random shooting of Germans continued. In retaliation, an estimated 1,400 hostages from the Paris region were taken and 981 executed by

22005-546: The next major phase of the Grand Louvre plan: the renovated North (Richelieu) Wing in the former Finance Ministry site, the museum's largest single expansion in its entire history, designed by Pei, his French associate Michel Macary, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte . Further underground spaces known as the Carrousel du Louvre , centered on the Inverted Pyramid and designed by Pei and Macary, had opened in October 1993. Other refurbished galleries, of Italian sculptures and Egyptian antiquities, opened in 1994. The third and last main phase of

22168-599: The paintings that they left without taking anything. He also persuaded them that the paintings in the adjoining vault, owned by Braque, were actually his own. Other "degenerate" artists, including Kandinsky and Henri Matisse , who sent drawings up to Paris from his residence in Nice, were officially condemned but continued to sell their works in the back rooms of Paris galleries. A few actors, such as Jean Gabin and film director Jean Renoir chose, for political or personal reasons, to leave Paris, but many others remained, avoided politics and focused on their art. These included

22331-428: The patriotic demonstrations on November 11. But after Operation Barbarossa , the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, they became among the most active and best-organized forces against the Germans. They remained hostile to de Gaulle, whom they denounced as a reactionary British puppet. On 21st of August 1941, a 21-year-old veteran communist named Pierre Georges , who used the clandestine name "Fabien", shot

22494-454: The peace, constantly threatened by the fascist instigators of war, the French Communist Party addresses its warmest greetings to the country of socialism, to its party and to its great leader Stalin ". In Paris, the copies of the newspaper and of the other Communist newspaper, Ce Soir , were seized by the police and their publication suspended. On August 31st, anticipating bombardment, the French government began to evacuate 30,000 children out of

22657-427: The permanent collection. The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art , paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. At any given point in time, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72,735 m (782,910 sq ft), making it the largest museum in the world . It received 8.9 million visitors in 2023, 14 percent more than in 2022, though below

22820-408: The plan unfolded mainly in 1997, with new renovated rooms in the Sully and Denon wings. A new entrance at the porte des Lions opened in 1998, leading on the first floor to new rooms of Spanish paintings. As of 2002, the Louvre's visitor count had doubled from its pre-Grand-Louvre levels. President Jacques Chirac , who had succeeded Mitterrand in 1995, insisted on the return of non-Western art to

22983-435: The police and prefect of the Seine, reported to him, and only secondarily to the government of the French State in Vichy. The Reich Security Main Office , which oversaw the SS , SD and the Gestapo , worked closely with the French Police and its auxiliaries. It established the Carlingue (or French Gestapo) which was used to conduct counter-insurgency operations against the Resistance . Its cadre, which were mostly from

23146-425: The police of Paris, under German control, received every day hundreds of anonymous denunciations by Parisians against other Parisians. Finding food soon became the first preoccupation of the Parisians. The authorities of the German occupation transformed French industry and agriculture into a machine for serving Germany. Shipments to Germany had first priority; what was left went to Paris and the rest of France. All of

23309-463: The prices higher. The French press and radio broadcast only German propaganda. The beginning of the STO, the program that required large number of young Frenchmen to work in factories for the German war industry, in exchange for the return of older and sick French prisoners of war in Germany, greatly increased the resentment of the French population against the Germans. Most Parisians, however, only expressed their anger and frustrations in private, while

23472-434: The principal intersections. German military vehicles with loudspeakers circulated, instructing Parisians not to leave their buildings. At eight in the morning, delegations of German officers arrived at Les Invalides , headquarters of the military governor of Paris, Henri Dentz , and at the Prefecture of Police, where the Prefect, Roger Langeron, was waiting. The Germans politely invited the French officials to put themselves at

23635-401: The rest of the war years with the anxiety of a possible second arrest. In 1944, she published one of her most famous works, Gigi . The philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre continued to write and publish; Simone de Beauvoir produced a broadcast on the history of the music hall for Radio Paris; and Marguerite Duras worked at a publishing house. The actress Danielle Darrieux made

23798-467: The restaurants found ways to serve their regular clients. The historian René Héron de Villefosse  [ fr ] , who lived in Paris throughout the war, described his experience: "The great restaurants were only allowed to serve, under the fierce eye of a frequent control, noodles with water, turnips and beets, in exchange for certain number of tickets, but the hunt for a good meal continued for many food-lovers. For five hundred francs one could conquer

23961-462: The roads out of the city with automobiles, tourist buses, trucks, wagons, carts, bicycles, and on foot. The slow-moving river of refugees took ten hours to cover thirty kilometers. Within a few days, the wealthier arrondissements of the city were nearly deserted, and the population of the working-class 14th arrondissement dropped from 178,000 to 49,000. The British General Staff urged the French to defend Paris street-by-street, but Pétain dismissed

24124-399: The room's prior decoration. That same year, the Louvre commissioned French artist François Morellet to create a work for the Lefuel stairs, on the first floor. For L'esprit d'escalier Morellet redesigned the stairscase's windows, echoing their original structures but distorting them to create a disturbing optical effect. On 6 June 2014, the Decorative Arts section on the first floor of

24287-454: The sack of Constantinople in 1204, were brought to Paris where they were placed atop Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in 1797. Under the Treaty of Tolentino, the two statues of the Nile and Tiber were taken to Paris from the Vatican in 1797, and were both kept in the Louvre until 1815. (The Nile was later returned to Rome, whereas the Tiber has remained in the Louvre to this day.) The despoilment of Italian churches and palaces outraged

24450-422: The sciences and arts". On 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property. Because of fear of vandalism or theft, on 19 August, the National Assembly pronounced the museum's preparation urgent. In October, a committee to "preserve the national memory" began assembling the collection for display. The museum opened on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of

24613-424: The side of cars. The Germans tried to co-opt the 'V' campaign, placing huge Vs. symbolizing their own victories, on the Eiffel Tower and the National Assembly, but with little effect. From the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, until June 1941, the Communists played no active part in the Resistance. The Vichy government and Germans allowed their newspapers to publish, and they made no mention of

24776-537: The specific week in which they could be used. Parisians (and all the population of France) were divided into seven categories depending upon their age, and allotted a certain amount of each product each month. A new bureaucracy, employing more than nine thousand city employees, with offices at all schools and the city hall of each arrondissement , was put into place to administer the program. The system resulted in long lines and frustrated hopes, since promised products often never appeared. Thousands of Parisians regularly made

24939-450: The students, and closed the entrance of the metro stations. They charged the students with fixed bayonets, firing shots in the air. The Vichy government announced 123 arrests and one student wounded. The students arrested were taken to the prisons of La Santé , Cherche-Midi and Fresnes , where they were beaten, slapped, stripped, and made to stand all night in the pouring rain. Some students were threatened by soldiers pretending to be

25102-432: The suppression of the Paris Commune . On 23 May 1871, as the French Army advanced into Paris, a force of Communards led by Jules Bergeret  [ fr ] set fire to the adjoining Tuileries Palace . The fire burned for forty-eight hours, entirely destroying the interior of the Tuileries and spreading to the north west wing of the museum next to it. The emperor's Louvre library ( Bibliothèque du Louvre ) and some of

25265-402: The trucks manufactured at the Citroen factory went directly to Germany. (Later many of these trucks were cleverly sabotaged by the French workers, who recalibrated the dip sticks so that the trucks would run out of oil without warning). Most shipments of meat, wheat, milk produce and other agricultural products also went to Germany. What remained for the Parisians was strictly rationed, following

25428-439: The unlabeled paintings hung "frame to frame from floor to ceiling". The structure itself closed in May 1796 due to structural deficiencies. It reopened on 14 July 1801, arranged chronologically and with new lighting and columns. On 15 August 1797, the Galerie d'Apollon was opened with an exhibition of drawings. Meanwhile, the Louvre's Gallery of Antiquity sculpture ( musée des Antiques ), with artefacts brought from Florence and

25591-451: The war continued, the Resistance was divided largely between the groups, followers of General de Gaulle in London, and those organized by the Communists. Thanks to pressure from the British, who supplied the weapons, and the diplomacy of one Resistance leader, Jean Moulin , who created the National Council of the Resistance ( Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR)), the different factions began to coordinate their actions. In early 1944, as

25754-461: Was liberated by French and American troops on August 25th; the next day, General de Gaulle led a triumphant parade down the Champs-Élysées on August 26th, and organized a new government. In the following months, ten thousand Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were arrested and tried, eight thousand convicted, and 116 executed. On April 29th and May 13th 1945, the first post-war municipal elections were held, in which French women voted for

25917-609: Was another preoccupation. The Germans had transferred the authority over the coal mines of northern France from Paris to their military headquarters in Brussels. The priority for the coal that did arrive in Paris was for use in factories. Even with ration cards, adequate coal for heating was almost impossible to find. Supplies for normal heating needs were not restored until 1949. Paris restaurants were open but had to deal with strict regulations and shortages. Meat could only be served on certain days, and certain products, such as cream, coffee and fresh produce were extremely rare. Nonetheless,

26080-680: Was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X , and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic . The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities ; Near Eastern Antiquities ; Greek , Etruscan , and Roman Antiquities ; Islamic Art ; Sculpture; Decorative Arts ; Paintings; Prints and Drawings. The Musée du Louvre contains approximately 500,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 m (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to

26243-444: Was murdered at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 7 March 1945. The Germans made a continual effort to seduce the Parisians through culture: in 1941, they organized a festival of German music by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Paris Opera, a play from the Schiller Theater in Berlin at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées , and an exhibit by the German sculptor Arno Breker . The French film industry, based in suburbs of Paris, had

26406-400: Was officially condemned as "degenerate" , his paintings continued to be sold at the Hôtel Drouot auction house and at the Galerie Louise Leiris , formerly Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler 's. German treasurer officials opened Picasso's bank vault, where he stored his private art collection, searching for Jewish-owned art they could seize. Picasso so confused them with his descriptions of ownership of

26569-409: Was shown to ambassadors from Siam in 1686. By the mid-18th century there were an increasing number of proposals to create a public gallery in the Louvre. Art critic Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne in 1747 published a call for a display of the royal collection. On 14 October 1750, Louis XV decided on a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of

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