The story of this place
Begun as a fortress under Philip II around 1190, the Louvre became the principal royal palace of France before Louis XIV decamped to Versailles in 1682. During the Revolution it opened as a public museum on 10 August 1793, displaying royal collections seized for the nation. Napoleon filled it with plunder from his campaigns, briefly renaming it the Musée Napoléon. Its most famous resident, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, was stolen by Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia in 1911 and recovered two years later. I. M. Pei's glass pyramid, controversial when unveiled in 1989, is now iconic. Today it draws around nine million visitors a year.