“Louvre Museum, French Musée du Louvre, official name Great Louvre, French Grand Louvre, national museum and art gallery of France, housed in part of a large palace in Paris that was built on the right-bank site of the 12th-century fortress of Philip Augustus. It is the world’s most-visited art museum, with a collection that spans work from ancient civilizations to the mid-19th century." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Louvre-Museum
History of the building
"In 1546 Francis I, who was a great art collector, had this old castle razed and began to build on its site another royal residence, the Louvre, which was added to by almost every subsequent French monarch. Under Francis I, only a small portion of the present Louvre was completed, under the architect Pierre Lescot. This original section is today the southwestern part of the Cour Carrée. In the 17th century, major additions were made to the building complex by Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Cardinal de Richelieu, the chief minister of Louis XIII, acquired great works of art for the king. Louis XIV and his minister, Cardinal Mazarin, acquired outstanding art collections, including that of Charles I of England. A committee consisting of the architects Claude Perrault and Louis Le Vau and the decorator and painter Charles Le Brun planned that part of the Louvre which is known as the Colonnade
The Louvre ceased to be a royal residence when Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles in 1682. The idea of using the Louvre as a public museum originated in the 18th century. The comte d’Angiviller helped build and plan the Grande Galerie and continued to acquire major works of art. In 1793 the revolutionary government opened to the public the Musée Central des Arts in the Grande Galerie. Under Napoleon the Cour Carrée and a wing on the north along the rue de Rivoli were begun. In the 19th century two major wings, their galleries and pavilions extending west, were completed, and Napoleon III was responsible for the exhibition that opened them. The completed Louvre was a vast complex of buildings forming two main quadrilaterals and enclosing two large courtyards.
The Louvre building complex underwent a major remodeling in the 1980s and ’90s in order to make the old museum more accessible and accommodating to its visitors. To this end, a vast underground complex of offices, shops, exhibition spaces, storage areas, and parking areas, as well as an auditorium, a tourist bus depot, and a cafeteria, was constructed underneath the Louvre’s central courtyards of the Cour Napoléon and the Cour du Carrousel. The ground-level entrance to this complex was situated in the centre of the Cour Napoléon and was crowned by a controversial steel-and-glass pyramid designed by the American architect I.M. Pei. The underground complex of support facilities and public amenities was opened in 1989. In 1993, on the museum’s 200th anniversary, the rebuilt Richelieu wing, formerly occupied by France’s Ministry of Finance, was opened; for the first time, the entire Louvre was devoted to museum purposes. The new wing, also designed by Pei, had more than 230,000 square feet (21,368 square metres) of exhibition space, originally housing collections of European painting, decorative arts, and Islamic art. Three glass-roofed interior courtyards displayed French sculpture and ancient Assyrian artworks. The museum’s expanding collection of Islamic art later moved into its own wing (opened 2012), for which Italian architects Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti enclosed another interior courtyard beneath an undulating gold-coloured roof made of glass and steel." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Louvre-Museum
Perseus and Andromeda 1678-1684
Hannibal 1687-1704 Sebastien Slodtz
Triptyque reliquaire de la Vraie-Croix after 1254
Vierge a l’Enfant
Evangiles de Drogon
Apartments of Napoleon III
Gold and Diamond Jewelry Napoleon III
Helmut of Charles IX Pierre Reddon
Summer about 1730 Rouen
Clock Pavilion
Galerie D’Apollon
The Winged Victory of Samothrace
Grande Galerie – “This gallery, built between 1595 and 1610, linked the Louvre to the Tuileries palace. It was used in the 17th century for the scrofula ceremony, during which the king laid his hands on the sick.” Louvre
From Amenhotep III Tomb
Objects d’Art Louis XIV
The Chimney Sweep 1770-1772 L. Roucel
Still Life with Ham 1626 Floris van Schooten
Bouquet of Flowers in a Stone Arch Opening onto a Landscape 1619-1621 Ambrosius Bosschaert
Allegory of Winter (and Love) 1625-1630 Abraham Bloemaert
Portrait of Marie de Medici Frans II Pourbus
The Hero Perseus Rescuing Andromeda 1611 Joachim Wtewael
Equestrian Portrait of Don Francesco de Moncada 1634 Antoon van Dyck
Saint Valerie carrying her head and flanked by two angels
Portrait de Louis XIII 1635 Philippe de Champaigne
Henri IV, King of France 1824 Francois-Joseph Bosio
The Barque of Dante 1822 Eugene Delacroix
Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi 1826 Eugene Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People 1830 Eugene Delacroix
Collection
"The Louvre’s painting collection is one of the richest in the world, representing all periods of European art up to the Revolutions of 1848. (Works painted after that date that the Louvre once housed were transferred to the Musée d’Orsay upon its opening in 1986.) The Louvre’s collection of French paintings from the 15th to the 19th century is unsurpassed in the world, and it also has many masterpieces by Italian Renaissance painters, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19), and works by Flemish and Dutch painters of the Baroque period.
The department of decorative arts displays the treasures of the French kings—bronzes, miniatures, pottery, tapestries, jewelry, and furniture—while the department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities features architecture, sculpture, mosaics, bronzes, jewelry, and pottery. The department of Egyptian antiquities was established in 1826 to organize the collections acquired during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. The department of Near Eastern antiquities is most important for its collection of Mesopotamian art.”
"A prestigious setting in the heart of the museum
In 1903 the Austrian confectioner Anton Rumpelmayer founded Angelina, named after his daughter-in-law. For more than a century, the tearoom on Rue de Rivoli has become a Parisian gourmet institution, frequented by Proust, Coco Chanel and many other great French fashion designers.
The Café Richelieu, previously the office of the French Minister of Finance (from Napoleon III to 1984), offers the same menu as Angelina. Try their famous "L'Africain" hot chocolate, or the ineffable Mont-Blanc.
The menu offers sandwiches, salads, seasonal dishes and a selection of Angelina's pastries: Mont-Blanc, macaroons, Saori, "Eva" tartlets, crisp vanilla eclairs, pistachio religieuses (puff pastry buns filled with pistachio cream), etc." https://www.louvre.fr/en/cafe-richelieu-angelina