Photo by Jason Chin, Calgary. View looking west from the square court of the Louvre towards the pyramid.

Many regard it as the most beautiful stroll you can take in any city in the world. Starting on the north end of the Pont des Arts, with the baroque splendor of the Institut de France at your back, proceeding north across the Seine into the courtyard of the Louvre, then west across the spacious sandy pathways of the Tuileries gardens. The serene beauty surrounding you belies the joy and despair of ten turbulent centuries embedded in the stone walls and the cobblestones beneath your feet.

This is the turbulent heart of the French capital, and its fulcrum is the Louvre. Known today as one of the greatest museums in the world, down through the centuries it has served as a dungeon, a castle, a place of refuge for an often besieged royal family, and always as a powerful symbol of the coming-into-being a the French nation.

The urban context enjoyed by the Louvre is unlike any other museum in the world. Any view of Paris from the air will reveal just how much land it occupies. With more than 19 hectares of rooms, the building offers a spacious home to millions of art works. Even today, this mighty ship of culture continues to be the subject of controversy. In the 1980's, many of France's cultural elite staged protests and boycotts in a futile attempt to prevent the construction of Ioh Ming Pei's spectacular glass pyramid in the centre of the museum's forecourt.

Photo by Jason Chin, Calgary. View of the foyer underneath the pyramid of the Louvre, showing Pei's unique spiral staircase.

President Francois Mitterand made the restoration and modernization of the Louvre one of his seven great projects for the city of Paris. Pei’s pyramid is just one component of a sweeping revitalization of the complex that took place through the 1980’s and ‘90’s, which now includes an enormous conference centre as well as shopping and food concourses. Today the museum can accommodate nearly twice as many visitors per day as it could before 1993, thanks to Pei's brilliant design. The main foyer beneath the pyramid remains one of my favorite places in Paris. An open sunlit space, filled with the bustle of expectant visitors discussing which of the three colossal wings of the museum to tackle first.

The name "Louvre" probably only derives from a medieval French word for "wolf", suggesting that a wolf-filled forest once occupied the site. A castle was first constructed at the western end of the city limits around the year 1100. The square court is the oldest part of the structure, and was dominated by a 100-foot tower on the southwest corner. The tower became a symbol of the golden age of king Phillip Augustus in the early 1200's. The Limbourg brothers left us an excellent illustration of Phillip’s castle in their famous illuminated manuscript "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry", painted between 1416 and 1419. The moat surrounding the castle gives us a sense of the royal family’s constant need for protection, even at this early stage. Danger could come equally from outside the city, or from the unruly citizens within.

The Louvre was greatly beautified and enhanced by King Francis I, who came to the throne in 1515, at the age of 21. He was known across Europe as an overtly confident and powerful king, as can be seen in the portrait painted by Jean Clouet about 1520 (one of the most compelling art works in the Louvre’s collection, although sadly tucked away in a corner gallery). The portrait by Clouet reveals the exquisite and sumptuous tastes of the king: the brocade background, the pearls and feathers in his hat, the satin doublet with gold embroidery and the incredibly detailed sword in his hand. His narrow eyes, shrewd look and thin moustache seem to portray a man of great intelligence and cunning. Francis was a connoisseur and amateur of art. He collected works by all the great Italian masters of the day, primarily Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed most of the paintings described in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code are in the Louvre today because of the close friendship that existed between Francis and Leonardo.

Henry II, the next king to influence the development of the Louvre, was married to the infamous Catherine de Medici. She had the Tuileries palace built, which was an enormous wing that ran north-south at the far western end of the site, closing off the open courtyard where the pyramid now stands. Henry began to rebuild the Louvre on a huge scale, expanding the square court, and creating the quadrangles to the west. He also created the Grande Galerie that runs east-west along the Seine. When I lead groups through the Louvre each summer, I like to pause and gather them around a particular window that looks down into the square court. Here on August 24, 1572, Catherine de Medici invited 2,000 of France’s leading Protestants to witness the marriage of her daughter Marguerite de Valois to the Protestant Henri de Navarre. All at once, the brutal motive behind the gathering became clear as Catherine ordered every last one of the guests murdered. The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre is yet another reminder of this museum’s blood-soaked past.

Perhaps the most important date in the history of the Louvre is 1793, when it was opened as a Museum of the Republic (the same year King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were executed during the worst moments of the Revolution). The Royal Family had already moved out of the Louvre the previous century, so it was an obvious choice as a location for the first public museum in France. Museums were an entirely new concept at this time. But the Louvre was meant to be a museum with a Revolutionary mandate, providing education and instruction to the common “citizens”, free of charge. All the treasures that had been previously reserved for the enjoyment of the very few would now be gathered in one place and made available to all.

The first great director of the Louvre’s collections was Dominique Vivant Denon (1747-1825), who was in fact the first curator anywhere to exhibit art works in chronological order. This was a revolutionary idea at the time - the idea that "understanding" art objectively in its historical context was more important than an unquestioning reverence for timeless classical beauty. In the words of Denon, "..we should not stand in awe of art, we should stand before it as students of man and nature." Denon would eventually have an entire wing of the Louvre named after him. In a painting by Adolphe Roehn, Denon is shown scouring the ruinous remains of a church for any remnants of art works destroyed by the revolutionaries. His avidity as a collector was truly legendary and much of the Louvre's collection exists today as a result of his efforts.

A painting by Hubert Robert from 1796, showing the Parisian public enjoying the newly founded museum.

Considering its turbulent history, it is no wonder the 18th century artist Hubert Robert painted two very different depictions of the Grand Gallery. The first is a delightful view of a thriving place of artistic enjoyment and study. The other is Robert's imaginary depiction of how the Louvre will look one day as a ruin. Just as it is certain that great art will endure, Robert suggests with equal certainty that great civilizations will all eventually destroy themselves. Happily, Robert’s prophesy has not yet come to pass. Today, the mighty ship of art and history keeps her steady course on the Seine, and remains one of the true wonders of the world.

— David Coman teaches in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. He is also the founder of Art of Paris Tours.