The Louvre Museum, with its spectacular glass pyramid, is an icon of Paris and one of the world's most-visited cultural sites. Its vast and rich collections encompass all ages: from antiquity (the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory) and the Renaissance (the Mona Lisa, works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Titian) to 19th-century French masterpieces. The Louvre-Lens project, now underway, will see more of the enormous collection out of storage and on display at a second site in north Paris.

The museum was originally the main Royal Palace in Paris, and was built on the site of an earlier royal fortress, whose remains can be seen on the ground floor. Napoleon, who preferred the Palace of Fontainbleau, turned the Louvre into a repository for all the artworks he looted from throughout Europe - and it remains today one the top three museums in the world, alongside the British Museum and the Hermitage.

Official Louvre Museum Website.

Written by  amoore.

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