Paris - Inverted Pyramid - 1er

Plate XV - Inverted Pyramide...

Beneath the forecourt of the Louvre’s Place du Carrousel, also accessed from the Rue de Rivoli, is an exclusive small shopping arcade known as the Carrousel du Louvre. It is here that one can see the Inverse or Upside Down Pyramid, part of Pei’s architectural themed use of the form. The centre houses many fine shops, some dealing in a vast and multilingual selection of Louvre related books and souvenirs. I bought a magnificent 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of David’s painting of Napoleon Crowning Josephine - Le Sacre de Napoléon (the Louvre version – if, as mentioned in an earlier post, I couldn’t get to see the traveling original at least I could piece it together when I got home.) I also believe Apple, in 2009, opened its flagship Paris store in the arcade. 

Beneath the inverted transparent chalice lies a second stone pyramid form, the two almost, but not quite, meeting apex to apex. Readers of Dan Brown’s novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ will recognise this as a significant climactic location of the plot of the story, for this stone form is the artifact he describes in his novel as “...the tiny structure”. Reading this book some years after my initial visit to the city I was amazed at how many of the locations used in Brown’s story of the Rose Line I had visited. 

If I’d only had Brown’s imagination ……

Paris - Louvre Pyramide - 1er

Plate XIV - The Pyramide from Cour Caree ...

The Cour Carée is not the most attractive part of the Louvre precinct. In fact I can think of only one reason to visit here and that is to orientate oneself before entering the buildings and so gain an understanding of the history of the Louvre’s plan, and then to exit. Although the complex of the Grand Louvre appears at first to have been architecturally co-ordinated in the French Renaissance manner, the many differently styled buildings were actually constructed over a period of 480 years – from the early sixteenth century reign of Francis I up to the presidency of Francois Mitterand who commissioned Ieoh Ming Pei to develop the Grand Louvre designs. The Mediaeval origins of the Louvre are no longer visible above ground, but still remain in open excavated exhibitions. I daresay it is not finished yet. Rumours abound that there is a plan, growing in popularity amongst the French, to reconstruct the Tuileries Palace within the Grand Louvre surrounds, and if progressed it will certainly take the exercise at least well into this 21st century. 

The major wings of the museum show a definite rivalry between Baroque and Classicism. Neither wins, and in my mind they live harmoniously side-by-side.

For his work on the entrance to the Louvre, Pei was awarded France’s Legion d’Honeur in 1993. It is interesting to learn of the many obstacles he was to overcome in his designs, and the unexpected discovery of those large subterranean relics of the mediaeval Louvre, now also presented to visitors to the museum.

This view of his Grand Pyramid is a bonus for visiting the Cour Carée. Perhaps that makes it two reasons to go there.

Paris - Grande Louvre - 1er

Plate XI - The Grande Louvre...

The Louvre became a royal residence in Paris in the fourteenth century when Charles V converted the original fortress buildings into a royal home. Its french Renaissance appearance is attributed to Francis 1. Here the court remained until the move to the adjacent Tuileries Palace, with Louis XIV finally relocating to his new construction in Versailles.

Today the Louvre is arguably the most famous art gallery and museum in the world. It is, to be smart about it, the Louvre of art galleries. If I were to hazard a guess at the whereabouts of almost any well-known classical work of art, my first choice would default to the Louvre. Since the 1990s the courtyard area of the old palace has been undergoing a major transformation in a scheme simply known as the Grand Louvre.
One of the more controversial aspects of this transformation was the construction of the Pyramids designed by the architect I. M. Pei. Unquestionably in a modern idiom both in terms of design and materials used I believe they greatly enhance the area. In truth, all the buildings of the Grand Louvre are not a unified single construction, in a single architectural style. In that regard Pei’s Grande Pyramid (an obvious reference to the nearby Place des Pyramides celebrating Napoleon’s Egyptian victories) adds a twentieth century element to the area. I believe time will bring full acceptance to the decreasing number of critics of its placement. In the gallery below this entrance the well-known electronics giant recently opened an Apple Store. Unquestionably this is the grandest entrance to any flagship store anywhere.