The Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is the most visited and one of the oldest, largest, and most famous art galleries and museums in the world.
The Louvre has a long history of artistic and historic conservation, the Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world.

History

Main article: Palais du Louvre Construction and architecture

Main article: Louvre Pyramid Louvre Pyramid
Since many of the works in the Louvre are viewed only in distinct departments — for example, French Painting, Near Eastern Art or Sculpture — established some 200 years ago, it was decided that a satellite building would be created outside of Paris, to experiment with other museological displays and to allow for a larger visitorship outside the confines of the Paris Palace. Sourced from the Louvre's core holdings, and not from long-lost or stored works in the basement of the Louvre, as widely thought, the new satellite will show works side-by-side, cross-referenced and juxtaposed from all periods and cultures, creating an entirely new experience for the museum visitor. The project completion is planned for late 2010; the building will be capable of receiving between 500 and 600 major works, with a core gallery dedicated to the human figure over several millennia. This new building should receive about 500,000 visitors per year. There were originally six city candidates for this project: Amiens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais, Lens, and Valenciennes. On November 29, 2004, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin chose Lens, Pas-de-Calais to be the site of the new Louvre building. Le Louvre-Lens was the name chosen for the museum.
The new satellite museum, funded by the local regional government, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, will have 22,000 square meters of usable space built on two levels, with semi-permanent exhibition space covering at least 5000 m². There will also be space set aside for rotating temporary exhibitions. The project will also feature a multi-purpose theatre and visitable conservation spaces. The building is comprised of a series of low-laying volumes clad in glass and stainless steel in the middle of a 60 acres former mining site, largely reclaimed by nature. The estimated cost for this building is 70 million euro, or 96.6 million US dollars (at July 2007). The new satellite building was selected after an international architectural competition in 2005. The architectural joint-venture team of SANAA of Tokyo and the New York-based IMREY CULBERT LP were awarded the project on September 26, 2005. SANAA, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa with Tim Culbert and Celia Imrey / IMREY CULBERT LP [3]). SANAA is a widely recognized Japanese architectural firm, noted for their ethereal designs. IMREY CULBERT is a US/French architectural firm, specializing in museum and exhibit designs, with offices in New York and Paris. Tim Culbert, project architect that lead the team's submission for the Louvre-Lens project, was previously an associate-partner of I.M. Pei, architect of the Pyramid of the Louvre.

Le Louvre-Lens
The Louvre can be accessed by the Palais Royal — Musée du Louvre Métro station. The station is named after the nearby Palais Royal and the Louvre. Until the 1990s its name was Palais Royal; it was renamed when a new access was built from the station to the underground portions of the redeveloped Louvre museum.

Access
Long managed by the French state under the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Louvre has recently acquired powers of self-management as an Établissement Public Autonome (Government-Owned Corporation) in order better to manage its growth.

Management
The director of the Louvre has in the past been known as its "Conservateur", and is now known as its "président directeur général". These have included:

Dominique Vivant : 1804-1815
Michel Delignat-Lavaut : ?-1987
Michel Laclotte : 1987-1994
Pierre Rosenberg : 1994-2001
Henri Loyrette : 2001-present Directors
The Musée du Louvre's collections number over 380,000 objects Signs prohibiting photography suggest the consultation of the images on the Louvre online catalogue instead.

Near Eastern Antiquities
Egyptian Antiquities
Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities
Islamic Art
Sculptures
Decorative Arts
Paintings
Prints and Drawings
100,000
50,000
45,000
10,000
6,550
20,704
11,900
183,500 Notable Paintings
The Louvre is a central location in the 1979 serial City of Death in the science fiction television series Doctor Who.
Film
The Louvre, its art, particularly the art in the basement — not on display — is the subject of a scene in Kate & Leopold.
Scenes were filmed in the Louvre in both Martin Scorsese's 1993 The Age of Innocence and Merchant Ivory's 1990 Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.
The Louvre is destroyed (along with the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe) during a counter-terrorism mission in the 2004 satirical film Team America: World Police.
The Da Vinci Code
The Louvre and many of its works of art are featured prominently in Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code and in the 2006 film adaptation. The Louvre is the main setting in the prologue and first few chapters of the book and parts of the movie. The museum is the homicide crime scene where curator Jacques Saunière is murdered by an Opus Dei member named Silas.
Film productions
The Louvre scenes of The Da Vinci Code were filmed on location. Originally, director Ron Howard was unable to obtain permission to film there, having already been denied access to Westminster Abbey and Saint-Sulpice (Paris). However, French President Jacques Chirac invited Howard to lunch at his home, where he informed the director that he would obtain clearance and Howard could contact him personally if there were any further problems.
Gaming
The Louvre inspired a virtual setting of adventure in the video game Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, starring Lara Croft.
Radio
The Louvre is a frequent location in the British radio series The Goon Show, in particular the episodes "Napoleon's Piano" (11 October 1955) and "The Mountain Eaters" (1 December 1958).
Music
The Louvre was also the name of a Los Angeles-based rock band in the 1980s.

Trivia
In March 2007, the Louvre announced that a Louvre museum would be completed by 2012 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The thirty-year agreement, signed by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, will prompt the construction of a Louvre museum in downtown Abu Dhabi in exchange for $1.3 billion USD. It has been noted that the museum will showcase work from multiple French museums, including the Louvre, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Musee d'Orsay and Versailles. However, Donnedieu de Vabres stated at the announcement that the Paris Louvre would not sell any of its 35,000-piece collection, on display.

See also
Medieval Fortress
Castle of the Louvre in the 15th century.
Model of the first royal "Castle of the Louvre"
Remains of the original, medieval foundations can still be seen underneath the museum.
The Gallery of 19th century French School
Paintings
Leonardo Da Vinci - The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
Anthony van Dyck - Charles I of England
Peter Paul Rubens - Coronation of Marie de' Medici in St. Denis
Jacques-Louis David - Oath of the Horatii