LOUVRE, loovr, The, an old royal palace at Paris, on the north bank of the Seine, a splendid quadrangular edifice, with a court in the centre, completed by Napoleon. The origin of its name and the time of the erection of the oldest part of it are unknown. It is only known that Philip Augustus, in 1214, built a fort and a state prison in this place, that Charles V, during the years 1364-80, added some embellish ments to the building and brought his library and his treasury thither. From the great donjon tower in centre of the castle the great fiefs of France took the feudal oath. Francis I erected that part of the palace which is now called the old Louvre. Henry IV laid the foundation of the splendid gallery which connects the Louvre on the south side with the Tuileries; Louis XIII erected the centre, and Louis XIV, according to the plan of the physi cian Perrault, the elegant façade toward the cast, together with the colonnade of the Louvre, which is still the most perfect work of archi tecture in France. At a later period Louis XIV chose the palace built by him at Versailles l for his residence. After Napoleon ha taken possession of the Tuileries he began second gallery, opposite to the former, by w ich the two palaces would have been made to form a great whole, with a large quadrangular court in the centre; only 600 feet of it were completed at the time of his abdication, and it remained uncompleted till 1857, when the work, in an improved and extended form, was fin shed. It
was greatly injured by the communists in May 1871, the Richelieu pavilion, containing the magnificent library, being burned. A great re construction was made between 1900 and 1902. The Louvre was set apart by tile Convention as a museum for the national collections in science and art and was first called Le /Aimee National. It contains the museums of paint ings, drawings, engravings, bronze antiques, sculptures, ancient and modern, tapestries, fur niture, together with special collections of an tiquities and an ethnographical collection. The collection of paintings is the largest in the world, French being best represented, and Dutch masters next. There are works by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rtrbens and Van Dyck. Since 1895 the Louvre has been given the right to buy and sell like a private individual, and a society exists for the purpose of helping the museum to buy works of importance. In 1909 the Museum of Decorative Arts was transferred from the Palais de l'Industrie to the Louvre.