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    The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum
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    The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum
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    The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum
    Ebook518 pages7 hours

    The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum

    By James Gardner

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    About this ebook

    The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world’s greatest art museum

    Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of that place and of the buildings themselves—a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English.

    More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546. It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since—through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present—the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building’s grand stature. Includes a 16-page full-color insert, featuring images illustrating the history of the Louvre, a full-color endpaper map detailing the Louvre’s evolution from fortress to museum, and black-and-white images throughout the narrative.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Monthly Press
    Release dateMay 5, 2020
    ISBN9780802148797

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    • 4/5
      The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World's Most Famous Museum by James Gardner is an engrossing and, for me, an eye-opening account of the history of the space we now know as the Louvre.While I have been twice, I am unfortunately one of those who went strictly to see what is stored inside without any inkling of the rich history of the building itself, not to mention the site as a whole. Gardner does an impressive job of consolidating all of the history into a readable book. This is a history book, not a work of fiction, so it does indeed read as a history book. It is quite engaging and nothing like a textbook though it is detailed. But detailed is different from being textbook-like. If you are hoping for a light read about just the museum itself, you might want to look elsewhere. If you are curious about how what seems to have been little more than a crossroads at one time could become, via a garrison and a palace, the world's most famous museum, you will be delighted with this book.When I mentioned the writing style a moment ago, I don't mean to imply that it is a light and breezy read, Gardner covers a lot of information and so the writing is definitely geared toward offering information and putting it in context with what came before or will come later. Pretty much by definition that writing will have to have a certain formalism to it. Yet even with those demands, the writing is still straightforward and quite enjoyable.I recommend this for readers who enjoy history as told through a specific place. Because of the time covered, we get a fair amount of European history here, but only as it applies to the Louvre. I also think anyone who has visited the museum but didn't know the rich history of the location itself will find a lot to enjoy.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.