The Louvre was originally built as a fortress on the banks of the River Seine at the end of the 12th century, and became the main residence of the French royal family under Francis I three centuries later.
After Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, moved the court to the Palace of Versailles in 1682 the Louvre was primarily used to house the royal collection which, by that time, already featured Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. At the same time use of the numerous rooms in the palace was granted to artists working for the king.
By the time the French Revolution began in 1789, Louis XVI had approved the idea of the Louvre housing a royal museum. As the monarchy fell into terminal decline this plan never came to fruition but, following the arrest of the royal family after the Storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, the royal collection became national property. The National Assembly subsequently decreed that the Louvre should house a public museum, and appointed a committee to ‘preserve the national memory’ who set about preparing the collection for display.
On 10 August 1793, exactly one year after the fall of the monarchy, the Louvre museum opened to the public. For three days every week the public were granted free access to view more than 700 pieces of art that had been confiscated from the royal collection, the nobility, and the Church. This collection soon began to expand as the revolutionary armies swept across Europe and, with a budget of 100,000 livres a year, obtained new works of art before it was temporarily closed in 1796 due to problems with the building.
The Louvre reopened under Napoleon and is now the largest art museum in the world, receiving over 10 million visitors a year.