The Louvre Palace is known, more than anything, for the museum it houses. Last year, despite the latest pandemic restrictions, 7.7 million people paid their ticket to see La Gioconda, the Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, the Code of Hammurabi..., a collection of works of art and historical objects that covers an immense range of times and places.
For this reason, due to what it contains, it is easy for one to miss the relevance of the building itself, which was the palace of the French monarchy from the 13th century and the seat of the Executive between the 17th and the end of the 18th. Only then, after the French Revolution, did it become a museum (exactly, in 1793).
It is not that the continent is more important than the content – that would be an exaggeration – but almost all the architectural styles of European history are represented there. There are Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Neo-Baroque parts... And, who was going to say it, also Gothic.
What happens is that, of this last style, that is, of the medieval part, only the foundations remain. They belong to the first castle, the one from the 13th century, which is important because it is at the origin of the entire later complex. It is not the most visited part of the museum, but if you go underground, under the Cour Carrée, you can walk between the walls and the donjon (as the French call the keep) and imagine how imposing that fortress must have been. .
That is why Philip II of France (1165-1223) ordered it to be built, to discourage anyone who came from the sea and who, going up the Seine, thought of besieging the city. That was the eternal vulnerability of the capital, the point where they always received the attacks. The Normans had already done it in the year 845, and now the English occupied Normandy, less than 100 kilometers away...
What did Philip do? He surrounded Paris with a great wall that embraced the houses on both sides of the river and had his castle built against the west wall. That's where he wanted it, because it's where the English were going to arrive or anyone who came from the English Channel.
In fact, there wasn't even a door on that flank. The two drawbridges were to the south and east, each flanked by two towers. In this way, the accesses could be covered from the loopholes (openings for the archers to shoot) on both sides. In the rest of the perimeter there was also a succession of towers, none more than 25 meters from the next, at a good firing distance.
The complex had a square floor plan (78 x 72 meters) and was surrounded by a ten meter wide moat filled with water from the Seine. If the attacker got past him, he would come up against a wall that was very difficult to overcome, since it ended in a slight slope. In addition to making it difficult to install ladders, this also caused stones thrown by defenders to bounce off the wall, impacting whatever was in front of it.
Inside was a courtyard (the parade ground) with a large keep in the center, a last bastion in which to entrench if the wall fell. It was circular, for experience had taught the French that corners make it easier to assault a wall. It was 15.6 meters in diameter, 4.25 thick at the base and 30 high. It was also surrounded by a moat (30 feet wide and 20 feet deep), but this was dry. It was about trapping the attackers there, so that a rain of stones and arrows fell on them from above.
Apart from some expansion under Louis IX (1214-1270; the Saint Louis room), the Louvre changed little until the arrival of Charles V (1338-1380). As the city had already grown beyond the first wall, he ordered the construction of a second defense that would embrace the new neighborhoods. Then the castle lost its raison d'être and could be reformed to make it more habitable. The facades and roofs were filled with statues and stylized towers, and the loopholes were replaced by large windows, giving light to rooms that had been dark and somewhat suffocating until then.
In The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry, a fifteenth-century manuscript, there is a miniature that, although somewhat idealized, gives us an idea of what that, now, palace was like. It appears full of machicolations, viewpoints, battlements and projections, all merely decorative, and topped by chimneys and towers finished in a conical shape. In a way, it evokes a fairy tale castle.
It remained like this until the mid-16th century, when the architect Pierre Lescot demolished the keep to leave a large courtyard in the center, as well as the west and south galleries, which were rebuilt in the Renaissance style. He did it at the request of King Francis I, who was in love with Italian artists, who introduced Renaissance art to France.
The new times required a monumental palace, in keeping with the European power that was already France. Even more so after Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) built her "whim" to the west of the Louvre (the Tuileries Palace) and Henry IV (1553-1610) connected both buildings through a very long gallery. The two palaces were becoming one, so the Louvre had to be modernized to resemble the other.
First Louis XIII (1601-1643) and then Louis XIV (1638-1715) enlarged the old parade ground to transform it into a much larger square (the Cour Carrée). They enlarged the wings that Lescot had already made, and added another to the north side. By the 18th century, the quadrangle was already closed. On three of its sides, it was between Renaissance and Baroque, and the east building coincided with Neoclassicism, building an imposing colonnade for what ended up being the entrance façade. Of course, to do all this they had to razing the old medieval castle.
