The Louvre is the world’s largest museum and houses one of the most impressive art collections in history. The magnificent, baroque-style palace and museum — LeMusée du Louvre in French — sits along the banks of the Seine River in Paris.

The history of the Louvre began toward the end of 1.100 A.D. in the area where there was a fortress, which later was converted into the royal residence and the secondary residence of Charles V in the 14th century. In the Renaissance period the Louvre became the main seat of the kings of France, and was Catherine de’Medici who enlarged and transformed the building. The Louvre lost its function of royal residence at the time of Louis XIV, who moved his court to the new Palace of Versailles. Since 1793 at the Louvre was created the Muséum Central des Arts, renamed in 1803 the Musée Napoléon.

So, originally the building of the Louvre wasn’t a museum, but became a museum only during the Enlightenment, when artists and craftsmen spent their time admiring and copying the works of the ancients. In the late 18th century and right after the French Revolution, began the acquisition of a large number of works that added to the initial and casual collection of the kings of France, to which were added the works of art coming from the most important European art collections and which arrived in France as spoils of the successful military campaigns of Napoleon.

The Louvre Museum is the result of a long work, started two centuries ago, made of collecting and organizing works and finds in order to create the most completed overview ever of what man has created from the Neolithic to nowadays.