Lecture: The Making of the Great Museums of Paris—The Making & Remaking of the Louvre Museum

What is the most iconic monument in Paris?

The Louvre stands out since it represents more than eight hundred years of evolution, spanning the history of modern Paris from the construction of the medieval fortress by Philippe-Auguste in 1200, to the construction of the Grande Galerie by Henri IV in 1600,  to the inauguration of the first museum in Paris in 1793, to the creation of the Nouveau Louvre by Napoléon III in the 1850s, to François Mitterrand’s inauguration of I.M. Pei’s Pyramid as part of the Grand Louvre project in 1989—surely the grandest and most ambitious of the “presidential museums” of the Fifth Republic—to President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of the Louvre: Nouvelle Renaissance project in January 2024.

With nearly 800,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Louvre is the world’s largest museum, with works from antiquity to the 19th century, including the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa, and is the epitome of the museum in constant change.

About the Presenter

Russell Kelley

Russell Kelley was the curator and moderator of the past five winters’ Zoom lecture series on the History and Heritage of France featuring the “Grands Châteaux of the Loire and Île de France”, “The Making of the French Garden”,  “The Great Churches of Paris”, “The Making of the Great Museums of Paris – From the Revolution Until 1900”, and “World Monuments in Paris”. He is the author of The Making of Paris: The Story of How Paris Evolved from a Fishing Village into the World’s Most Beautiful City (Lyons Press, 2021) and Walking Through the Ages of Paris – Ten Historical Walking Tours Through the City of Light (Lyons Press, to be published in 2026), and has lived in Paris for more than 30 years.