This programme contains
some strong language.
My name's Andrew Hussey
and I'm the Dean of the University
of London Institute in Paris.
I first came to
the city as a teenager
and I have had a big connection
with it ever since.
Now, I live and work here.
I still love the place
and I'm still fascinated by it.
But these days, I travel
around Paris not just for pleasure,
but also to explore the places that
inspire my writing about the city.
But there's still one trip in
Paris that I always make
with a fair amount of trepidation.
And that's here.
To the Louvre.
As you can see, the Louvre is big,
brooding and vast.
To be honest, I've always been quite
intimidated by this most
massive of museums.
But in this film,
I want to change the way that I,
and maybe you, see it too.
So I want you to come with me
on a tour of this extraordinary
institution,
and to do a little bit of
time-travelling in French history.
On the way, I am going to try
and make sense of a place
that's jam-packed with over 35,000
pieces of art
that you'll find in mile after
mile after mile of galleries.
It's a building that's over 800
years old and bursting with history.
So come with me and see the Louvre
transformed
from a medieval fortress to a royal
palace,
and then to a modern-day museum.
We will look at the great art
of da Vinci,
Rubens,
David
and Gericault.
We will enjoy
the glories of antiquity
and explain why the magnificent
artworks that you can see today
arrived in the museum,
and what they tell us about both
the Louvre and France.
I want to argue that if you know
the secrets of the Louvre,
know its history, know the
glorious art within these walls,
then I think
you can understand France.
The Louvre.
Well, there's lots and
lots and lots and lots of art here.
So, where to begin?
Why not start with one of the oldest
paintings in the museum?
From the 15th century, a work of art
with a gruesome subject.
It will give us our first clue to
the Louvre's long history.
Look at this.
This is a painting called La
Crucifixion du Parlement de Paris.
There's a lot of interesting
stuff going on here.
Here in the foreground, for example,
this bloke with his head
in his hands.
That's Saint Denis, who was
one of the patron saints of Paris.
Saint Denis was martyred
in the third century,
beheaded on the high ground above
the city,
the present-day quartier
of Montmartre.
But his is not the only
image of suffering.
At the centre of the painting
is Christ on the cross.
On one side of him
is the grieving Virgin Mother,
comforted by Mary Magdalene. On
the other, St John the Evangelist.
And this is art with a purpose.
It was deliberately hung in the main
chamber of the Parlement de Paris,
a reminder to lawmakers
to show due humility
in the face of divine justice.
But one other detail provides
an insight into more earthly
matters of bricks and mortar.
This is the best
approximation of what the Louvre
would have looked liked
to medieval Parisians.
What they saw was a fortress,
a citadel of military power.
The medieval Louvre
was built strategically close
to the River Seine,
along the walls
of the medieval city.
A 30-metre tower looked out
to the West and the enemy,
the English, on a border sometimes
only 45 miles away.
The castle dominated
the Parisian skyline,
a very visible, a very deliberate
assertion of French power.
On the outside of today's museum,
there are a few clues to what
lies underneath.
The opening of a well and a cesspit.
Below, there are the thick,
strong walls and tall palisades
that defended the Capetian
and Valois kings of France
from their enemies.
This is the Louvre entresol,
the basement of the museum.
30 years ago, excavations took place
which revealed these walls,
which show just how
forbidding the Louvre was
in its original medieval
incarnation.
Now, there's been a lot of debate
over the meaning of the word
"Louvre".
But I'm going to go with the
old French term, "louver",
which means "fortress"
or "stronghold".
I think that pretty much sums
up the place and its history.
When the Renaissance came
to France in the 16th century,
this military fortress became
a royal palace of great style
and culture.
In the museum today is the portrait
of the man who began
this transformation.
This is Francois I,
King of France,
and the first great
builder of the Louvre.
It was painted around 1530
by the artist Jean Clouet.
It's a portrait of a real
Renaissance man. He is a fighter.
Check out the hand on the sword ever
ready. But he is also a lover...
of culture. And
so it's a picture of refinement.
Check out the tasteful clothes.
He is every inch, as the French
would say, a man "a la mode".
Francois I began the tradition
that French kings should be both
connoisseurs of art
and patrons of artists.
In 1516, he persuaded an elderly
Leonardo da Vinci to leave Italy.
The painting days of the great
genius were over,
but it is thought that he brought
with him...you-know-who.
This painting that millions come
to see today was the first-ever
work of art to enter the French
royal collection.
# Mona Lisa
# Mona Lisa, men have named you... #
Ah, Mona Lisa.
Mona Lisa.
That smile, that smile.
Enigmatic, mysterious,
tender or mocking?
"What is it about that smile?"
I asked the Louvre's curator of
Renaissance art, Vincent Delieuvin.
La probleme que j'ai avec
La Joconde, c'est...
TRANSLATION: 'The problem I have got
with the Mona Lisa
'is that she is such
a big media star.'
THEY SPEAK FRENCH
TRANSLATION: 'What you have to do is
'to try and forget that she
is such a big star
'and really get into the painting.
'Get up close
and love it for what it is,
'and she definitely invites us
to love her.
'It's such an incredible ability
of the painter to portray that
'most difficult and subtle of human
expressions, the smile.
'There are 1,000 ways of interpreting
a smile, and that was the genius
'of Leonardo, to be able to capture
'such a subtle and rich human
expression.
'She is such a flirt.
Of course she's a huge flirt.
'The French like that sort of thing,
'but hey, you're not completely
untouched by her, are you?'
# Mona Liiiii-saaaa. #
What else is there left to
say about this painting?
Only that in the 16th century,
La Joconde, as it's known
in France, was something quite
new in Western art.
TRANSLATION: 'The idea of creating a
sense of contact between the viewer
'and the subject had never
been done before.
'Or the open posture with her hands
turned towards us.
'She's greeting us as if we were
in her palace, in her room, even.
'It's even smiling at us.
'That technique of drawing the viewer
directly into the painting
'was hugely innovative.
'Was all this a new departure for
Western art? Absolutely.'
'How many politicians' portraits have
you seen in the style of La Joconde?
'Everyone uses Leonardo's style,
from the framing to
'the posture, to the direct approach
of the subject to the audience.'
So how influential was this approach
to portraiture at the time?
Well, let's go back
to the portrait of Francois.
Had its creator, Jean Clouet,
seen the Mona Lisa?
We don't actually know. But Francois
does look us straight in the eye.
His body is turned
towards the viewer
and his hands face the same way
as da Vinci's Florentine lady.
And as with her, we are drawn
towards the personality of the King.
Francois was not only a patron of
the arts but a builder of palaces.
He'd spent some time in Italy
and he wanted to emulate the
style of the Renaissance palazzi.
So the medieval tower was
pulled down.
Moats were filled in and a
courtyard built, the Cour Carree,
overlooked by this imposing
and ornamented facade.
And within, the King demanded
a makeover of gloomy
royal apartments.
This is the Salle des Caryatides.
I think it's a place that best
captures the spirit
and feeling
of the Renaissance Louvre.
It's a vision of science
and nature in harmony,
and it signals the beginning
of the French classical tradition.
You can see its expression in the
four sculptures by Jean Goujon,
which give the room its name.
These are the four caryatides.
They have a function as pillars,
but they are also
works of art in themselves -
beautifully sculpted forms,
every curve and fold capturing
a fleshy allure.
And they stand sentinel to an
elegant stairway that reveals to us
yet another treasure of the Louvre.
If we look around here, we see
images also sculpted by Jean Goujon.
And they give us pointers to the man
who commissioned this
passageway, between the first
and second floors of the palace.
He and his mistress have a
love of hunting.
And here, look at this letter H.
That's a royal monogram, a kind
of graffiti tag chiselled in stone.
And H stands for Henri II,
who succeeded Francois II.
Both within and without, every ruler
who wanted to use the Louvre
as a symbol of their power would
leave their mark in this way.
So, the walls read like an alphabet
designed for posterity.
The Renaissance Louvre
was a place of great culture
but it was also
the location for great violence
during the infamous
Saint Bartholomew's Eve massacre.
When religious war between
Catholics
and Huguenot Protestants threatened
to tear France apart,
the palace was witness to great
horror that began with
that most familiar of sounds from
the nearby church of
Saint Germain L'Auxerrois.
In the early hours
of the 24th of August 1572,
the sound of monks tolling
the bell for Matins could be
heard as usual throughout
the streets of Paris.
But this particular morning,
this normally reassuring sound was
the cue for slaughter to begin,
of Protestants by Catholics.
"Tuez-les tous!" was the battle
cry. "Kill them all!"
Writer on the Louvre, Daniel
Soulier, told me about the moment
the very heart of power in France
became a killing field.
SPEAKS FRENCH
TRANSLATION: 'These windows were the
Queen's rooms.
'So all the key decisions surrounding
the Saint Bartholomew massacre
'would have taken place just
metres above where we are now sat.
'We know that many people were killed
here in the courtyards of the Louvre.
'They were slightly hesitant
to kill people
'in the actual royal apartments,
so we imagine that they
'dragged a lot of people out
here in order to kill them.
'There is another story
that people tell.
'The King at the time, Charles IX,
'sat in a balcony window
with a crossbow,
'firing down upon Huguenots who were
trying to escape on the River Seine.'
There was a survivor of this
terrible day in the Louvre,
a Huguenot prince of the blood,
Henri of Navarre.
Days before the massacre,
Henri had married the sister of
Charles IX, Marguerite de Valois.
20 years later, the couple
were King and Queen of France.
The last Valois king had
died childless and Henri,
next in line to the throne,
became the first ruler of a new
dynasty, the Bourbons.
But to become Henri IV for all
of France,
and crowned as such in Paris,
a deal needed to be struck.
Henri would have to convert to
Catholicism.
He passed through here,
the Rue St Honore,
which is just opposite the Louvre,
heading for Notre Dame to hear Mass,
and this was
the 22nd of March, 1594.
He did this because, as we know,
to give France peace
and unity, it was worth a Mass.
"Paris vaut bien une messe."
A statue of Henri IV is on the Pont
Neuf, which was itself completed
in his reign, to connect the right
and left banks of the Seine.
But the King was also determined
to make his mark on
the royal palace nearby.
Henri wanted to link the Louvre
to the recently built
palace of the Tuileries nearby.
So to connect the two palaces,
he ordered this built -
the Grande Galerie.
A name was now given to this
grandiose vision of expansion.
Le Grand Dessein, the great plan.
As you can see, it's all
conceived on the grandest scale.
It is half a mile from there to
there, for example.
And the idea was that this is
a place of entertainment
and magnificent spectacle.
You could come here, for example,
to watch the water pageants
on the Seine.
But it's also a mystical space,
a sacred space.
It's where Henri IV and the Bourbon
kings who came after him,
literally believed that they
had the divine touch.
They believed,
most importantly, that they
could cure people
of the disease of scrofula,
which is a really nasty kind of
tuberculosis of the neck.
What would happen is that the
King would receive people,
and say "The King touches you.
God cures you."
Either way, I hope it worked.
Now, there is a clue to Henri's
life and loves in the Louvre.
It's a painting that is not
in one of the main galleries,
where thousands gather to
look at the usual suspects.
But if you find this mysterious
and striking work of art,
you won't be disappointed.
This is Gabrielle d'Estrees
and her sister.
Gabrielle d'Estrees was
the mistress of Henri IV.
As they say, every picture tells a
story. Have a look at the gestures.
Gabrielle's sister is holding her
nipple between thumb
and finger, to indicate that she
is pregnant with the King's son,
the future Duc de Vendome.
Gabrielle is also holding
a bejewelled hand of gold.
It's not worn on her finger
to symbolise a marriage,
but it is thought to be
the King's coronation ring,
a token of his love and his loyalty.
The two women are sitting
in a bath,
perhaps filled with milk or wine,
as was the aristocratic custom.
Both are beautifully made up to show
off their white alabaster faces.
Women of the time, actually,
would crush up the innards of
swallows
and mix them with lilies,
ground pearls and camphor
and smear the paste on their faces
to get this ghostly look.
This didn't seem to dampen
the ardour of Henri,
who couldn't resist Gabrielle.
She bore him three other children
before her sudden death in 1599.
Henri's own life also came to
an abrupt end,
on the streets of Paris
on the 14th of May, 1610.
One of his greatest achievements
was to have guaranteed
the religious liberties
of Protestant Huguenots.
But for such tolerance, he would
never be forgiven by those who saw
themselves as holy
warriors for the true faith of Rome.
The fun-loving Henri came to a gory
and violent end.
It was here,
on the Rue de la Ferronerie.
This was where a religious
fanatic called Francois Ravaillac
pulled back the blinds of the
carriage the King was travelling in
and plunged a long knife, three
times, deep into his chest.
The assassination of Henri
left uncertainty
over who would now rule France.
Here's the story in paint
of the woman who did.
Here in the Louvre
are 24 canvases devoted to the life
of Marie de Medici,
Henri's second wife.
As regent,
the Queen had many enemies.
She needed to legitimise
her grip on power.
So she turned to the weapon of art
and the greatest painter of the day,
Peter Paul Rubens.
I talked to curator Blaise Ducos
about the biggest painting here
showing the Queen's coronation.
TRANSLATION: 'Here, the first big
impression is one of a great movement
'over towards the main focus
of the painting, which is, of course,
'Marie de Medici in the process
of being crowned
'in the Saint-Denis Basilica
'the day before the assassination
of Henri IV.
'You can even see him
in the background,
'but very much recognisable,
watching the Queen.
'And in the process, giving her
the sense of legitimacy that without,
'she wouldn't have been able to
govern and rule as regent.'
This is painting
on the grandest of scales.
This the art of the Baroque,
with its extravagant use of
movement and colour
and its feeling of sensuality.
And all of this simply leaps out
here.
SPEAKS FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: 'It's a piece
of theatre in many senses,
'and you have to look at it that way.
'They're very theatrical paintings,
very...Baroque.
'And, of course, Rubens was
the great Baroque painter.'
And it was the sheer ornamentality
of the Baroque
that fired the imagination
of the next ruler Of France
to mould the Louvre
in his own image.
This is the famous portrait
of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud.
He was the Sun King,
the L'Etate C'est Moi -
champion of bling.
He was the Bourbon who brought
new levels of pomp and grandeur
to the Louvre.
But to my mind there's
something over-the-top,
even desperately camp
about this painting.
Have a look at the big hair,
the shoes, the clothes,
the rich, rich colours.
All of it seems to be screaming
luxury and power,
but, after all, that was what
it was all about.
During the early years
of Louis' reign,
the Louvre echoed to the sounds
of thousands of labourers,
masons and joiners,
working to create new facades -
stuccos, elaborately carved ceilings
and wood panelling.
Work started on an opposing facade
on the outside of the Cour Carree.
This colonnade would look out.
A Parisian would look up to the
palace with due deference and awe.
Here, in the Cour Carree,
Louis completed the building work
begun by his father.
He quadrupled the size of this
courtyard
to the dimensions you see today.
And with one express aim -
to make the Louvre a bigger
and more imposing place.
And inside a royal waiting room was
built - the Rotonde d'Apollon -
to wow impressionable visitors
to the palace.
Just off the Rotonde,
a spectacular gallery was built -
the Galerie d'Apollon, designed by
the King's architect, Louis Le Vau.
I'm looking around because
everything here
has a kind of mystical
or allegorical meaning,
and all of that is literally
revolving around the King himself.
And just look at this place!
It's splendid, it's glittering
with all this gold glory -
it really is the personification
of what it means to be the Sun King.
Every image here reinforces
the assertion that the King
was god-like -
the centre of the universe.
Looking down from high,
on a country where he, and he alone,
had absolute power.
With a rule over France,
that could never ever be
questioned by mere mortals.
And like his illustrious predecessor
Francois,
Louis was not only a builder,
but someone with a huge appetite
for collecting art -
the Charles Saatchi,
if you like, of the 17th century.
During his reign,
the size of the royal collection
expanded from 150 to
exactly 2,376 paintings.
He bought the best French art
of his time -
32 Poussin, 11 Claude,
26 Le Brun and 17 Mignard.
And foreign masterpieces like this
lovely but sombre painting,
The Death of the Virgin
by Caravaggio.
All now hang here in what
was HIS Louvre.
The Louvre was a luxurious
plaything for Louis XIV,
but there was one big problem -
it was in Paris, and he hated Paris.
But, funny enough,
the Parisians also hated him.
So what happened in 1670 was that
Louis XIV left Paris for Versailles
in a great, big, splendid,
royal huff.
And he hardly ever set foot
in the place again.
But he didn't leave empty-handed -
he took all of his artworks
with him.
With the exit of Louis XIV
to Versailles,
the Grand Dessein was put on hold.
Much of the building work
remained unfinished.
The colonnade was left
without a roof.
Throughout the 18th century,
the Louvre had a much more
ramshackle feel to it.
And it echoed to a more plebeian
cacophony of sounds and voices.
The Grande Galerie changed from the
preserve of royals and aristocrats,
and became instead the centre
for artistic hustling in Paris.
This is where you'd find engravers
hard at work, furniture-makers,
makers of the very finest hats -
it was a place of great energy,
bustle and commerce.
But the most important thing
that happened here,
was that by royal warrant, artists
were allowed to come and live here,
and they copied paintings,
and then they made their own art.
And this was the moment when
the Louvre properly became
a centre of cultural exchange in the
endless carnival of Parisian life.
As the palace began to open
its doors to vulgar outsiders,
the presence of the Royal Academy
of Painting and Sculpture
in the King's former apartments,
still preserved a sense of decorum
and gravitas in the Louvre.
First in the Grande Galerie,
and here in the Salle Carree,
the Academy held an annual,
then biennial, exhibition.
Starting on St Louis' day
25th of August,
the Salon was open to the public.
The idea of showing art to all
who wish to come was novel,
and proved fantastically popular.
Events at the Salon were something
to be argued about
in another institution,
for ever dear to all Parisians.
This was the first-ever coffee house
in Paris,
opening to customers in 1686.
From the word go, the Cafe Procope
attracted intellectuals.
In the 18th century, the philosophes
of the Enlightenment came here -
and amongst them was someone
very important to our story.
Behind me here -
this is Denis Diderot.
Now Diderot wrote penetrating
critiques of the Salon,
and in doing so he effectively
invented art criticism.
And he threw down a challenge
to artists with an ambition
to impress him in the Salon -
"First of all move me, surprise me,
rend my heart,
"make me tremble, weep, shudder,
outrage me,
"and delight my eyes afterwards,
if you can."
Diderot was delighted by one artist,
whose wonderful and poignant
self-portraits you can find
in the Louvre.
And this is the painter,
Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin.
Chardin did this pastel drawing
of himself when he was 76,
and the infirmity of old age had
stopped him painting in oils.
In his still lives,
Chardin was painting on a much
smaller scale than a Rubens.
And the canvases of Chardin have
an apparent simplicity about them.
But this art is not simplistic,
and in these paintings
small, not big, is beautiful.
The work of Chardin mesmerised
Diderot
who saw something magical at work.
"Oh, Chardin, it's not white,
red and black
"that you are mixing on your
palette,
"it's the very substance of objects.
"It's the very air and light that
you put on the tip of your brush,
"and place on the canvas."
I talked to curator
Marie Catherine Sahut about Chardin
and what he taught Diderot.
SPEAKS FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: 'All Chardin's efforts
went into the magic
'of turning inanimate everyday
objects into beautiful artwork.
'And for Diderot, I think, it was all
about entering into the paintings
'and the mind-set of Chardin,
'and trying to find out what it was
that made it so magical.
'The word "magic" is, in fact, used
a number of times by Diderot,
'and Chardin taught him
to go right up to a painting,
'as, when you get up close
to a painting,
'it ceases to have any
significant meaning.
'It becomes just streaks of paint.
'And then gradually,
as you move away from it,
'everything slowly creeps
into focus.'
There is one painting of Chardin
that I especially wanted to look at
here -
the one that is considered
his masterpiece - The Ray.
Yes, it's a still life.
But with such energy and motion -
look at the cat about
to pounce on the oysters!
And what really draws the eye,
is the eviscerated form
of the ray fish.
TRANSLATOR: 'I think Chardin created
a true character of the ray,
'personified in many senses with
a seemingly tragic character.
'He uses the form of the ray,
this triangular shape that you see,
'but also its whiteness
to construct his painting.
'And then there's
the semblance of a face,
'that many people
read into the painting.
'Which is, in fact, neither the
mouth, nor the eyes, but the gills.
'It's a sort of anthropomorphic
vision of this ray.
'Which is, of course,
also rather dramatic,
'with his insides coming out,
reddened.'
Whatever genius we now recognise
in the still lives of Chardin,
this style of art was seen by
the Academy as inferior
to the more high-minded
genre of history painting.
Works inspired by the past can be
seen in the Salle Rouge...
..where hang the creations of one
artist from the last 18th century
who received the acclaim
of the Salon
with paintings that looked
back to antiquity
as a source of moral instruction
to the present.
This is a self-portrait
of the artist who features
in the next part of our story -
Jacques Louis David -
and it captures him at a bad moment
in his life
when he was in prison
during the French Revolution.
But the curious thing is
the expression on his face.
Is he angry? Is he frightened?
Or is this the self-regard
of the tormented artist?
He was certainly vain enough, but
we're getting ahead of ourselves.
In 1784, David painted this -
The Oath of the Horatii.
And he did it for the man who'd
given him a studio and lodgings
in the Louvre - Louis XVI.
It tells the story of three brothers
sworn to defend Rome.
Look at the outstretched arms
reaching towards the father
who holds the weapons
of war in his hand.
And look at the way the picture
splits in two -
between its masculine
and feminine characters.
The style is simple, austere
with sombre colours.
The painting took
the Salon of 1785 by storm -
hailed as an instant masterpiece
of neoclassical art.
But what meaning did it have
for the monarch who paid for it,
and the others who saw it?
Everyone agreed it was
a patriotic painting.
But was there something more
subversive going on here,
addressed to those now seeing
themselves as citizens?
Because this was a painting
whose message would change
during a turbulent decade
of French history.
Just in the ten years after David
had painted The Oath of Horatii,
his patron, the King, was dead.
He was sent to the guillotine
here in the Place de la Concorde.
This was the most shocking moment
yet in the drama of the Revolution
that had begun with the storming
of the Bastille.
On a windy morning,
on January 21st, 1793,
Louis the XVI mounted the scaffold,
watched by thousands.
There was a roll of drums...
..and then the 12 inch blade fell.
CROWD ROAR
As was the custom, the severed head
dripping with blood, was held aloft
for display to the citizens
of the first French Republic.
As so began the Terror,
when 18,000 men and women were sent
to the guillotine,
and David, now an elected deputy
to the National Convention,
was up to his neck in it.
David voted for the killing
of the King,
and eagerly signed arrest warrants
so others could go to their deaths.
When Robespierre's great rival
Danton went to his death,
David was there shouting out
mockingly...
"Le voila, le scelerat ! C'est ce
scelerat qui est le Grand-juge !"
"Here, look at the criminal
who thinks he's the big judge."
David became Robespierre's
cultural commissar.
He demanded that artists
be at the service of the people,
the meaning of their art
appropriated for the Revolution.
David included his own art
in this command.
So, when his masterpiece The Oath
of the Horatii was shown again,
it was interpreted as a work
of revolutionary virtue,
with oaths to La Patrie,
much "fraternite",
and a taste for martyrdom.
But what paintings like this needed
was a public place
to educate loyal citizens
of the Republic.
So David and fellow revolutionaries,
turned to an idea
proposed by Enlightenment
thinkers like Diderot,
who'd advocated that a permanent
exhibition space be created -
a museum. So, where?
On the 10th of August, 1793,
exactly 12 months after
the fall of the Ancien Regime,
the Louvre was declared Musee
de la Nation, "the people's museum".
And the ceremony took place
here in the Grande Galerie.
What actually happened was that all
art in France was nationalised,
all art in fact in the territories
that France also had its eye on.
So what happened really was that
from the royal collection in
Versailles, from churches,
from aristocrats, from exiles -
all art now belonged to the people,
"la grande patrie".
This was brutal and necessary,
argued the likes of David
and his fellow revolutionaries.
But what was really happening was a
seismic shift in European history.
This was the moment when art
ceased to be
the preserve of the rich
and the wealthy
and was really at the service
of the people.
The new museum worked to
the revolutionary 10-day week.
The first six were reserved
for artists who were at liberty
to take paintings off walls to copy,
free to put chalk marks
on the canvases.
Then the Louvre was open
three days for the public.
With the last day
for cleaning and repairs.
And to add to the galleries
of confiscated art,
the revolutionary army was given
the order to seize new treasures
during the campaigns abroad.
On the 27th of July, 1798,
on the anniversary of the fall
of Robespierre,
an extraordinary procession
of revolutionary booty from Italy
made its way across Paris.
And it ended up here
on the Champs des Mars.
There were 80 wagons stuffed to
the gills with books, manuscripts,
rare plants and exotic animals.
And there were also lots of
paintings
from church and aristocratic
collections -
including Titian and Raphael -
whose ultimate destination
was the Louvre.
On a banner proclaimed the slogan
of the day -
"Ils sont enfin
sur une terre libre."
"At last,
they're in a free country."
Today there are works
of extraordinary beauty
for us to enjoy in the Louvre,
and all because of this
revolutionary plundering.
There are sculptures
by Michelangelo -
The Dying and The Rebellious Slaves.
They were taken
from the Vatican in Rome.
And from the Benedictine monastery
of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice,
was seized this vast canvas -
The Wedding Feast at Cana
by Veronese.
Its life-size figures
had been dominating the refectory
for over 200 years.
The painting was so big it had to be
cut into two
to make the journey by mule
across the Alps.
Vincent Delieuvin knows
the painting intimately.
THEY CONVERSE IN FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: 'When we take step back
and get a sense of the perspective,
'there are the columns reaching out
at the back, which give it amplitude,
'and, of course, there's the colour -
the greens, the blues and the reds.
'All bouncing off and complementing
each other.
'It's extraordinary.
'Across the painting, it's the
little hidden gems that I love.
'All the little details.
'There's even a musical performance
going here in the foreground.
'And there's a woman over here that's
looking straight at us,
'as if...flirting with us!
'Next to the one picking her teeth.
'All of these amusing little bits
and pieces.
'Even the slightly sterner men -
you can see this chap over here,
'who is holding himself very distant
and severe.
'Those that look like they're about
to fall asleep
'because of the alcohol.
'It's such a vibrant painting -
almost noisy, if you will.
'But in the end,
'what I find extraordinary
'is the figure smack bang
in the middle of the painting.
'This is the haloed figure of
Jesus Christ
'with the Virgin Mary by his side.
'Staring into space,
oblivious to the revelry around him.'
Perhaps the message here is simple -
all this pleasure around me
is ephemeral,
what I bring you is eternal.
By 1798, when this booty reached
Paris,
the revolutionary ardour of David,
indeed of France, had cooled.
After the fall of Robespierre,
David was arrested
and put in prison where this
self-portrait was painted.
So perhaps this gaze shows
a certain scepticism
and distaste for the rough
old trade of politics.
But if David was anything,
he was a survivor.
On his release, the painter was
ready to ride
the next wave of history.
Time to offer his talents to
the next strong man of France.
TRUMPET FANFARE
David found himself at
the beck and call of a man
who said that he didn't know much
about art and architecture,
but he did know
exactly what it meant
when it came to
buffing up his image.
This was a man who'd been a
military hero during the Revolution.
Then after the coup d'etat
that ended the Directory,
he was the First Consul.
He was the despot who
crowned himself Emperor.
Yes, Napoleon Bonaparte.
If you visit Napoleon's Tomb
here at Les Invalides in Paris,
you can see enshrined in marble
evidence that the Louvre
was important to Napoleon.
I love this. This is the celebration
of Napoleon's public achievements,
it's, "Look upon my works,
ye tourists, and be impressed."
And either side is a list of
everything that he's achieved
as public works.
And in the centre of it is the
Travaux du Louvre, the Louvre.
Once Napoleon had absolute power
in France, he wasted little time
in using the Louvre for the
purposes of self-promotion.
The dictator ordered that
the Revolutionary Museum
now be called
the Musee Napoleon.
And he had this mini and first
Arc de Triomphe erected here
in front of the Louvre
on the Carrousel
as a monument to his martial glory.
On top were beautiful
bronze statues of horses
plundered from
St Mark's Square in Venice.
Friezes celebrated Napoleon's
many military campaigns.
And there's this inscription
dedicated to the Austrian Campaign,
and the decisive French victory
at the Battle of Austerlitz.
Napoleon put his imprint on walls
and ceilings with the letter N,
and his chosen images
of bees and eagles.
And he needed a painter to
immortalise the most sacred
moments of his life in
the most sacred spaces.
On the 18th of December 1803,
a proclamation declared,
"Nous avons nommes M David
notre premier peintre."
Much to the immense
self-satisfaction of David,
he was now "our" first painter,
and in 1804, "we"
had a job for him.
Napoleon made sure that
David, his court painter,
witnessed the moment that
he crowned himself Emperor
here in Notre Dame on
the 2nd of December 1804.
Originally, David had a
ringside view for his sketching,
but then the master of ceremonies,
an aristocrat called
Louis-Philippe de Segur,
who was very conscious
of class and rank,
moved David right up
into the galleries,
right high up where he could
neither see the procession
nor, crucially,
could he see the crowning.
When this happened,
David exploded, he went mad,
there was a fight, real fisticuffs,
and it was only after this punch-up
that David got his
rightful place back.
The rest, of course, is
art history, but, you know,
talk about an artistic temperament!
The finished work's in the Louvre,
and it's a piece of work
on a huge scale.
It's the detail that's important,
and this is what preoccupied
David and Napoleon when they
met to discuss the painting.
David captured the moment that
Napoleon crowned Josephine queen,
not his own coronation.
Her kneeling figure was copied
from Rubens'
Coronation of Marie de' Medici.
By the way, she's had
years taken off her
by David's painterly facelift.
Originally, David had painted
the Pope with his hands
folded in his lap, until the
Emperor explained that he hadn't got
the Pontiff all the way from the
Vatican just to sit and do nothing.
So, David changed this to Pope
Pius VII blessing the coronation.
And there's mischief here too.
Look at the wily survivor
Talleyrand and his turned up nose.
This is the man that
Bonaparte famously called,
"a piece of shit
in a silk stocking."
The female figure on the balcony,
that's Napoleon's mother,
who couldn't stand Josephine
and actually wasn't
there on the big day.
But on instruction,
David put her in the picture anyway.
And there, of course, sketchbook in
hand, is the great artist himself.
Despite the success
of this painting,
there was a prickly
relationship between David
and the courtiers
around the Emperor.
This picture was meant to be
the first of four
celebrating the coronation,
but the project was never completed
after squabbles about money.
So it's perhaps no coincidence
that in 1806, the great general
gave David and fellow painters
their marching orders.
They had just 24 hours
to pack up their studios in
the Cour Carree and get out.
And when Napoleon married
for the second time in 1810,
David wasn't asked
to record the ceremony
when it took place in the Louvre.
The close relationship between
painter and despot was over
as their fortunes declined,
David to new rivals
with new ideas about art,
Napoleon to the hubris that
led to his fall from power
and the return of
the Bourbon monarchy.
The rule of Napoleon was ended in
1815 with the Battle of Waterloo,
and the Restoration of the
Bourbon dynasty was secured.
The Louvre was renamed
Le Musee Royal,
and all of the visual
propaganda changed too.
Out went the Napoleonic N
and the bees and the eagles
that had been his symbol,
and in came the image of the lily
and the monogram LL for Louis XVIII,
and there was other
interesting stuff.
If you look up here, you can see
that this is the face of Napoleon.
What happened was that the new King
had a wig placed
on Bonaparte's head,
transforming him into the image of
his illustrious forebear, Louis XIV.
The Restoration was a challenging
period for the Louvre, forced
to concede to demands that 5,000
pieces of plundered art be returned.
The bronze horses on top of the
Arc de Triomphe went back to Venice,
and were replaced by
these grey imitations.
Some treasures did remain.
The Wedding at Cana was kept,
simply too big to be moved again,
the museum argued.
An elderly David was now in exile
like his former patron Bonaparte,
but a new generation
of painters was emerging
and producing
stunning works of art.
One is to be found
in the Salle Rouge.
This painting, Le Radeau de la
Meduse, The Raft of the Medusa
by Gericault, is one of the
great treasures of the Louvre.
It was the talk of the Salon when
it was first exhibited in 1819,
and it was very quickly acquired
by the then-director of the Louvre,
the Compte de Forbin. I think it's
an extraordinary, complex painting.
It's realistic but
it's not quite real,
you've got these human bodies
constructed as a kind of pyramid.
It's very romantic,
it's about human suffering
but also about
the impossibility of hope.
But what you really feel
is that you're in the painting,
you're in that pyramid
of human suffering.
And you can see the kind of
forensic nature of Gericault's work.
He was the kind of man who
spent hours in mortuaries
and hospitals
sketching out dead bodies
and he wasn't even afraid to take
home the limbs to work out the
tricky bits, and that's what makes
this painting so stark, so powerful.
There was no bigger scandal
than the shipwreck of the frigate
Meduse off the West African coast,
captained by the hapless
Viscount Chaumareys.
Of the 147 crew, only 13 survived.
This was headline news,
and the public lapped up lurid
tales of cannibalism and madness.
Such a juicy story translated
to canvas could only be
good for the career
of the 20-year-old artist.
I asked curator Sebastien Allard
about the painting.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: 'It was, and has been
taken as a form of allegory,
'since Gericault's depicting
a ship that was wrecked
'as a direct result of the
incompetence of its captain.
'Survivors were stranded on a raft
without food, water or hope,
'and people took all this as an
allusion to the French State
'after the fall of the Empire,
governed by incompetence.'
There are more intense, romantic
sensibilities at work here.
TRANSLATOR: 'We can see here a taste
for rather dark and sinister painting
'that's in stark contrast to the
relatively clear and bright paintings
'of David, and which, of course,
'acts as a tool towards the
dramatic effect of the painting.
'And it's a rather macabre style,
'with a penchant
for death and corpses.'
As well as bringing the best of
contemporary art into the Louvre,
these decades of the Restoration
saw the arrival from Egypt
of mysterious and magical objects
that were old yet very new.
On the 25th of October 1836,
the great obelisk
behind me here was unveiled.
It came from a temple in Luxor
and was the gift
of the Khedive of Egypt.
Its original base featured monkeys
who had suspiciously
large erections,
and obviously this had to be
replaced by something
much more austere, in granite
and fashioned in Brittany.
But nonetheless, this latest
monument was a great success,
and the most important thing was
that it announced a new mania in
France for all things Oriental.
The man who arranged the passage
of the obelisk to Paris,
and who brought so much
to the story of the Louvre,
was Jean-Francois Champollion.
Now Champollion worked here
in the Louvre, and he established
the superb and stunning
collection that we see here today.
But not only that, Champollion
was the first person to decipher
hieroglyphics, and in doing so, he
invented the science of Egyptology.
Inspired by Napoleon's
Egyptian Campaigns,
Champollion devoted his life to
understanding this ancient culture.
By the age of 16, he knew
a dozen ancient languages,
and with this
extraordinary facility,
he began the long task
of deciphering hieroglyphs.
In 1824, in the
Precis du systeme hieroglyphique,
Champollion revealed that he had
cracked these hidden codes.
By this time, Champollion had
persuaded the King to buy three
private collections for the Louvre,
and these were housed in
a dedicated Musee Egyptien.
When it opened, Champollion wrote
an open letter to visitors saying,
"I'm thrilled just thinking
about what I have to show you."
And he was dead right
to be thrilled.
Along with statues
of Egyptian pharaohs,
there were religious artefacts
and everyday objects.
Today, we take these for granted,
but in 1826, this was
the shock of the new.
We should pause to reflect
on this moment in our story,
because it signals another
important transformation
for the Louvre.
Before, it was a
palace with paintings.
Now, it's what we recognise
properly as a museum,
full of works of art
from all ages and cultures,
and a place for
scholarly investigation.
In its way, this was
a cultural revolution.
And speaking of revolution,
what had happened to
the French taste for it?
MUSIC: "La Marseillaise"
After 15 years of monarchy,
the barricades went up in Paris.
For three days, between the
27th and 29th of July 1830,
there was street-fighting
across the city to challenge
the autocratic rule of Charles X.
"Les Trois Glorieuses",
as it was known in revolutionary
folklore, is naturally commemorated
here with this fine and thrusting
monument at Place de la Bastille.
But one young French artist
wanted to do things his own way
to commemorate this July Revolution.
He wanted something
more sweeping, more daring,
something more epic,
and what he did is in the Louvre.
28th of July, Liberty Leading
the People by Eugene Delacroix,
is to be found in the Salle Rouge.
In 1830, Delacroix had written
to his brother that he was
taking on a modern subject,
a barricade.
"If I haven't fought for my country,
at least I'll paint for her."
The painting that emerged from his
studio was the hit of the Salon.
It's realistic.
Delacroix used real people as
models to depict real events,
but it's also allegorical.
There's bare-breasted Marianne,
bayoneted musket in one hand,
the Tricolour flag of
the Republic in the other,
the personification of
Liberty in revolution.
This Republican Amazon
leads young and old
and all classes to the barricades.
Here, the top-hatted
figure of some means,
and here
the pistol-packing student.
At their feet, the dead,
a Royalist National Guardsman
and this semi-naked figure,
surely copied from
Gericault's Raft of the Medusa
that Delacroix knew so well.
And it all takes place against
the smoking backdrop of Paris,
the Republican flag hanging
from Notre Dame in the distance.
And the colours used here,
red, white and blue of course.
There is, perhaps, no more iconic
image in all of French history.
And it didn't take long for the
street-fighting men and women,
commemorated by Delacroix,
to be at it again.
As Karl Marx observed,
"History was repeating itself."
Revolution in 1848 was,
in that very French way,
followed by reaction.
The nephew of Napoleon,
Louis Bonaparte,
came to power by coup d'etat
that ended the short-lived
Second Republic,
and like his uncle, declared
himself Emperor of a Second Empire.
At the heart of this Empire would
be a city of Grands Boulevards
and buildings built
by Baron Haussmann.
And the Louvre was to become
the symbol of a modernised Paris.
In 1852, a new Louvre Project
was announced that would complete
the Grand Dessein by connecting
both sides of the Louvre
to the Palace of the Tuileries.
The old tenement buildings
and stalls
that had been part of the
site for centuries were
bulldozed to make way for
this vision of the future.
The Louvre was once more to be
a focus for political power.
The Emperor would rule from here.
It would be the site of government,
with bureaucrats in the new wings
working away for France,
and it would be a symbol
of French cultural power,
with its magnificent museum.
The sheer ambition of this
project was explained to me
by Daniel Soulie.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: 'We say in France
'that Napoleon really gave
"the full packet".
'It was a full-on Imperial project.
'He threw limitless money, limitless
people and limitless resources at it.
'The Emperor had a hand in everything
that happened in the Louvre,
'so all possibilities were open.
'He ordered that where the little
town had sprung up here behind us,
'the Richelieu Wing should be built,
'and the Denon Wing on
the other side over here.
'With these two new wings, he was
able to enclose the space and create
'a courtyard of vast proportions,
right at the centre of the building.'
Grandeur on the outside was
reinforced by opulence within.
Again, no expense was spared.
Just look at all this luxury.
The walls, the fittings,
the carpets and the furniture.
What does it remind you of?
Yes, Louis XIV,
and that was deliberate.
This Second Empire style
was a self-conscious
and some said vulgar way
of aping the Sun King.
But Louis Bonaparte wanted
everybody to know that his Louvre
was as much a glittering reflection
of his Imperial eminence
as any in the past.
But the destruction
of the old Louvre
was mourned by one poet and critic.
Charles Baudelaire was a
regular visitor to the museum.
It was a warm and comfortable
place to meet his mother.
He once took a five franc whore
to look at the ancient statues.
She professed to be
scandalised by the nudity.
Baudelaire was a great admirer
and friend of Delacroix,
who in 1851, had completed this
ceiling in the Galerie d'Apollon.
They were romantic soul brothers.
Of the painter he wrote,
"Delacroix was passionately
in love with passion
"but coldly determined to express
passion as clearly as possible."
But while Baudelaire loved the art
inside the Louvre with passion,
he hated what had happened outside.
In 1857, a collection of his poems
was published, The Flowers of Evil.
In it there's one poem, The Swan,
which captures his melancholy
over what had been lost here
and elsewhere in Paris.
The rickety tenements, the market
stalls and the poor in pocket
but rich in heart.
HE RECITES IN FRENCH
TRANSLATION: 'Paris changes! But
in my melancholy nothing has moved
'New palaces, blocks,
scaffoldings, old neighbourhoods
'Everything for me is allegory
'And my dear memories
are heavier than stone
'And so outside the Louvre
an image gives me pause
'I think of my great swan
His gestures pained and mad
'Like other exiles
both ridiculous and sublime
'Gnawed by his endless longing.'
Baudelaire had lost his beloved
Paris, but the city created
by Haussmann for Louis-Napoleon is
one that you can still enjoy today.
And I for one never fail
to be impressed by its scale,
its straight lines and symmetry.
But it wouldn't take long
for the Emperor to lose the capital,
and with it, his Louvre.
In 1870, he entered
into a disastrous war with Prussia.
France was occupied
and Paris put under siege.
After military defeat,
Louis Bonaparte left the Louvre for
the last time and went into exile.
In Paris, barricades went up
for one final time,
as a Commune was declared.
The Communards took control
of the city in the spring of 1871.
At first, it was all done
in a traditionally festive mood.
En fete.
On the 16th of May, the Communards
knocked down the mock Roman column,
here on the Place Vendome
that had been erected
as yet another tribute
to Napoleon's military exploits.
Then, around midnight,
the revolutionary fiesta moved on.
Around 300 Communards broke into the
cellars of the grand Hotel du Louvre
where they helped themselves
to the finest wines and smoked...
the most expensive
and hugest cigars they could find.
But these May days of hope
were also accompanied
by intense fighting
around the Louvre,
as civil war between left
and right turned bloody.
On 23 May, the Palace of the
Tuileries was set on fire
and its dome blown up
with explosives.
The place that had been home
to kings, queens and emperors
burned for 48 hours.
The destruction of the Tuileries
left a gaping hole that created
this skyline,
with its clear views
all the way to the Arc de Triomphe.
As for the Louvre, I think
that this was a defining moment.
The residence of royals
and emperors, the Tuileries
had always been the symbol
of autocratic rule to Parisians.
Yet the Louvre was by now
a different place
in the eyes of the people,
so it was spared the torch.
Perhaps the presence of publicly
available art
guaranteed its survival.
Why destroy the People's Museum?
That would be vandalism.
And by the time a Third Republic was
established in 1870s,
there was much more to be enjoyed
in the museum.
There were wonderful new paintings
donated by benefactors
like the generous Dr Lacaze.
One of these is The Club Foot
by Jusepe de Ribera,
a 17th-century portrait
of disability.
The boy smiles
and reveals his broken teeth.
He looks us straight in the eye,
he wants something.
So look at his hand holding
a piece of paper, a begging letter.
"For the love of God, give me alms,"
it reads.
And visitors could marvel at
this fabulous marble statue,
the Winged Victory of Samothrace,
which had arrived
from an excavation in the Aegean.
Over 2,000 years old, it's a
depiction of the Greek goddess Nike,
thought to be celebrating
a naval battle.
She's got a kind of still beauty
and grace,
but her flowing drapery gives
a dynamism and movement.
I feel as if she could
take wing at any time
and fly through
the miles of galleries.
The Louvre was now established
as a democratic space
open free to the public
six days a week.
And visitors from all over France
and beyond
were eager to visit this must-see
part of the Paris experience.
By the late 19th century,
there was no question that Paris was
the cultural capital of the world.
And that the Louvre was the most
potent symbol of this domination.
By now, it was well established
as a public space
open to all who wished to visit.
The artists of the day would
congregate in places like this,
Cafe La Palette.
And the Impressionists were the
most regular visitors to the museum,
taking their inspiration from
the past, to look, learn and copy.
Here in the Louvre is a pastel
drawing by Degas, La Sortie Du Bain.
Here's a Monet.
At the time, works like these
were considered avant-garde,
scandalous even,
and as such, were rejected
by the Academy
that still controlled the Salon.
So these painters were forced
to exhibit in a Salon des Refuses.
Here's a Pissarro.
He once said to Cezanne that he'd
be glad to see the Louvre burn down.
But Cezanne himself valued
the museum.
He wrote to a friend,
"Keep the best company,
"spend your days at the Louvre."
Which is just what he did.
Cezanne loved to contemplate
the work of Chardin -
his visual language,
his depiction of nature,
simplicity of his composition.
And all of this
he put into his own work.
But composers could be
similarly inspired.
Claude Debussy
stood in front of this painting,
Embarkation For Cythera,
by Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Who wouldn't be captivated by
the playful flirtatiousness
of the couples?
And who wouldn't be mesmerised
by its mystery?
Debussy saw all of this
and wrote a piece for piano,
L'Isle Joyeuse.
And writers too enjoyed the museum.
Not only as a place of culture, but
also as somewhere to meet friends.
And even sometimes to meet lovers.
The Louvre was a place
of amorous assignation
for the American writer
Edith Wharton.
This is where she met her lover,
the Paris correspondent of
The Times, Morton Fullerton.
They used to send each other secret
notes in the Paris postal system.
It was a kind of early 20th-century
form of text messaging.
One from Edith simply said,
"At the Louvre, one o'clock,
under the shadow of Diana."
But speaking of mysterious ladies...
..after all these many years,
what had happened to you-know-who?
The Mona Lisa remained in the royal
collection until the Revolution.
Then, in 1800, Napoleon demanded
that she join him in his bedroom
in the Palace of the Tuileries.
So, not tonight, Josephine.
But in the 19th century,
La Joconde was back in the Louvre.
Now scrutinised
by tortured aesthetes.
That smile on her face was surely
the oh-so cruel and mocking pout
of the femme fatale.
Then, on 21 August 1911,
the painting was nicked.
The heist was both daft and daring.
What actually happened was that
a young Italian workman,
a painter and decorator
called Vincenzo Peruggia,
just walked out off the building
with the Mona Lisa under his coat,
presumably whistling a cheery aria
as Italian workmen are wont to do.
He took it back to Mama Italia.
Pandemonium broke out.
The museum was closed for a week,
the director was sacked,
and two new guard dogs were
appointed, Jacques and Milord.
The whole of Paris
had a right good laugh
at the expense
of a red-faced Louvre.
New lyrics were set
to favourite melodies
which satirised
the cheeky abduction.
And these were sung in musical halls
and cabaret clubs across the city.
One dirty ditty found the Mona Lisa
in a place of ill repute.
"Mon poteau.
"Embrasses-moi,
je suis pas begueule.
"Mais je m'ennuyais beaucoup
dans ce palais.
"Un soir que le gardian criait,
"'On ferme!' J'ai repondu,
'Ta gueule!'
"Et je suis carbatte toute seule."
Which roughly translates as, "Hey,
mate, give us a kiss, I'm not fussy,
"but I was so bored in that palace.
So one night when the guard cried,
"'Closing time!' I just said,
'Fuck you, mate!' and scarpered."
The year the painting returned
to the Louvre,
after being found in Italy,
was the first of a World War
when a generation bled to death
for France.
Then, in 1940, a second war erupted,
bringing humiliation and occupation.
And after that, there was
the loss of empire.
So after all this,
how to project the prestige of
France in diminished times?
Why, with art, of course.
And the Louvre had a role to play
in a piece of cultural diplomacy.
In 1962, General De Gaulle decreed
that the Mona Lisa
should visit the USA.
So La Joconde left Le Havre
on the luxury transatlantic liner
SS France in a first-class cabin,
cocooned in a waterproof container
that would float if the boat sank.
On her arrival in New York, she was
received by President Kennedy
like a head of state,
before doing her duty for France
and becoming a massive hit
with the American public.
KENNEDY: Monsier Malraux, I know
that the last time the Mona Lisa
was exhibited outside Paris
in Florence,
a crowd of 30,000 people
packed the gallery on a single day,
while large crowds outside
smashed the windows.
I can assure you that if our own
reception is more orderly,
though perhaps as noisy, it contains
no less enthusiasm or gratitude.
APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER
By the 1960s,
and despite the treasures within,
the Louvre was showing its age.
It was stuck in the past.
So perhaps that's why new wave film
director Jean-Luc Godard decided
to shoot a sequence for his 1964
film Bande A Part there
to show his heroine, Odile, and
would-be criminals Arthur and Franz
attempting to beat the world record
for running through the museum.
Obviously they're up for a bit
of fun in the stuffy museum.
But I also think this is
an artful piece of satire by Godard.
A quick critique of the French
cultural establishment.
So, how could the museum get
a new lease of life?
Well, return to
the idea of building again.
Return to the spirit
of the "Grand Dessein".
In the 1980s, it was the creation
of this structure behind me here
which symbolised the transformation
of the Louvre
into a museum for the modern world.
This is the glass Pyramid designed
by American architect IM Pei.
Finished in 1989,
it's the most visible expression
of the grand projet
of the then President of France,
Francois Mitterrand.
And it's now the Pyramid that
defines the Louvre to the world.
The Louvre was perfect
for Mitterrand.
NEWSREADER: 'The inauguration of
the new entrance to the Louvre
'by President Mitterrand this
afternoon means the public...'
Mitterrand was a politician
with an acute sense of history.
And a vanity to match.
When elected in 1981, he was
looking for projects that would be
lasting testaments
to his presidency.
His culture Minister, Jack Lang,
suggested radical change
for the museum.
Passant et repassant...
TRANSLATION: 'I was going
past the Louvre every day.
'And I remember being shocked
by the dirtiness of the place
'and its general state of disrepair,
'with all the dust
covering everything.
'And I was shocked by the presence
of a large car park,
'right in the middle of the Cours
Napoleon, for all the civil servants.
'So in, I think, July 1981,
I added a little note to Mitterrand
'titled "Le Grand Louvre".
'I said to him,
"What if we totally completed
'"the transformation
from palace the museum?"'
Before things Egyptian
were the shock of the new
in a previous century,
plans for a pyramid structure
reflecting the ambitions of
Mitterrand
as a modern-day pharaoh
created a storm.
Le Monde's critic accused
the government of turning
the courtyard of the Louvre
into an annexe of Disneyland.
"Ooh-la-la! Quelle horreur!"
But I actually think that the Louvre
came out of all this
smelling of roses.
This time, the modernists have won.
When I look at the Pyramid,
I feel like I'm looking at
a great work of modern art
in steel and glass.
Still, I'm curious to know
what the Louvre's great pioneering
Egyptologist, Champollion,
might have made of this tribute
to an ancient culture.
What strikes me, in this city
of most meaningful monuments,
is that this says we are a modern
country, we are go-ahead.
"Nous sommes la France tres cool."
But it's not only the outside
that impresses.
The Pyramid illuminates a huge
reception area underground.
And new areas of the Louvre
have been opened up
to the shining light of culture.
Including the new Richelieu
Galleries in the East Wing,
formerly occupied by the men
from the Ministry of Finance.
The palace would now be all museum.
I'm in the Cours Marly,
and I'm surrounded by statues.
This courtyard area used to be
open to the elements.
But now it's all glassed over,
letting the light
of the Parisian skies flood in.
And that makes it
a really comfortable
and airy place to view art.
Visit today and you understand
that the Grand Louvre project
has been a runaway success.
Before the '80s, 2 million people
visited the Louvre every year.
Now, the figure is closer
to 9 million.
And this grandest of
"grands projets" continues.
In September 2012,
a new gallery opened
to house the riches of the museum's
collection of Islamic art.
Here are 3,000 works in 3,000
square feet of exhibition space.
All housed in the most radical
piece of architecture
to grace the museum
since the Pyramid.
There's a wonderful elusiveness
to the Islamic gallery's
roof and ceiling.
Is it a golden veil?
Undulating sand dunes?
Or perhaps even a flying carpet?
Under this covering,
there are great treasures.
With Islamic strictures against
representations of the human form,
everyday objects become art.
A candlestick adorned with ducks.
A perfume burner
in the shape of a cat.
Both from 11th century
central Asia.
And these calligraphic delights
with their messages from the past.
A lamp that shines
the wisdom of Islam.
A ninth century vase with a love
letter written on its side.
And a plate from Samarkand
with an inscription which reads,
"At first,
magnanimity has a bitter taste.
"But in the end
it feels as sweet as honey."
And in the lower galleries,
I'm looking for a special work
because it gives us one last
reminder of the story of the Louvre.
And here it is -
the Baptistere de Saint Louis.
A masterpiece in brass,
inlaid with gold and silver.
It was made in Syria
in the 14th century,
the work of Mohammed ibn al-Zain.
It's beautiful in its detail.
And here, a coat of arms seemingly
hammered on at a later date.
This is the fleur de lys
of the Bourbon Kings.
How this extraordinary object
got into their hands is not known,
but it was used to baptise
Louis XIII, son of Henry IV
and father of the Sun King,
those great builders of the Louvre.
And it made its way
to the museum in 1793,
confiscated
from the royal collection
by David and the revolutionaries.
But, for this magnificent art,
there's also a much bigger picture.
This shows that the museum
is sensitive and aware,
building a bridge between France
and the Muslim world.
And this fulfils France's historical
role as an influence there,
"une puissance musulmane".
So, under the canny piece
of cultural diplomacy
to project just the right image
of France in today's world.
But let's end where we started,
with the word,
with a medieval word, "louver",
meaning stronghold.
Because when I began this journey,
the Louvre did feel very much
like a cultural fortress.
But time-travelling
through its art and history,
what I've tried to do is open it all
up, literally to "ouvrir le Louvre".
And in the process, I've come to
realise that there's another word
which sums the place up
much, much better.
And this is a very French one,
very Gallic -
"la gloire".
Now, this is a word
which is a little bit difficult
to translate into English.
But what it's about is
power, splendour and beauty.
And that for me,
cher telespectateur,
is the real treasure of the Louvre,
buried deep here
in the heart of Paris.