Palais du Louvre

The Palais du Louvre stands on Paris’s Right Bank, between the Tuileries Gardens and Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. Today, its vast palace complex houses the Louvre Museum. Buildings cover about forty hectares around the eastern Cour Carrée and central Cour Napoléon. The glass Louvre Pyramid marks Cour Napoléon’s centre.

Philip II Augustus built a defensive castle here around 1190, protecting Paris’s western wall. Royal residence and government offices followed between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. Francis I began the transformation into a Renaissance palace in the late 1540s, leaving the Lescot Wing as its oldest standing section. Most surviving construction belongs to the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Tuileries Palace connected with the Louvre through the Grand Design, completed with the Pavillon de Flore in the early 1600s. The École du Louvre and Musée des Arts Décoratifs also occupy parts of the palace. I. M. Pei designed the glass pyramid as the complex’s main entrance and centrepiece.

City: Paris
Content updated: 2026-06-22

Image: Rijksmuseum CC0
Image: Jacques I Androuet du CerceauPublic domain
Image: Jacques I Androuet du CerceauPublic domain
Image: ceronne from Mexico CC BY 2.0
Image: Unknown authorUnknown authorPublic domain

Take this page with you

The myTuur app is free, and once you are standing at a spot its story starts by itself.

Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through Paris. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.

What is myTuur?

myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.