The Louvre

The Louvre is the first full-length history of the world-famous museum in English. Its history reaches far earlier than many visitors to the museum today realize, with roots in antiquity through to the present as it transitioned from a fortress to a palace to its current form. Today, the Louvre is in the exact geographic center of Paris, and in many ways, its history mirrors that of the city itself. The Louvre is both the evolving story of the buildings in their many incarnations and all that has occurred in them—from fortress to royal palace to museum—and the stories behind many of its artistic treasures and the royals, politicians, and collectors who brought them there. The Louvre is so named because its location has been called le Louvre for a thousand years, for reasons unknown. In 2018, Paris’s official tourism office estimated that the city received nearly 40 million tourists. The Louvre was the third most visited cultural site in the city, after Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, with an estimated ten million visitors annually, beating out even the Eiffel Tower. We are publishing in the Spring, when France sees the beginning of its peak tourist season. The Louvre is fully illustrated with images running throughout, a color insert section, and color endpaper maps, offering a beautiful gift package to Francophiles and history fans alike. I.M. Pei, architect of the iconic Pyramide outside the museum itself, died in May 2019. Nearly all obituaries noted his monumental contributions to the Louvre’s exterior courtyard and cited Pei’s own statement: “If there’s one thing I know I didn’t do wrong, it’s the Louvre.” Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has promised to give a quote for the jacket. We will approach Ross King, Paul Goldberger, Nick Weber, and other notables in the worlds of art and architecture. James Gardner has written widely in publications including the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , and the New Republic , and he is currently a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques .