In November 1993, on the 200th anniversary of the Louvre as a museum, the second and most important part of the Grand Louvre project was completed. It had begun in 1989 with the departure of the Ministry of Finance from the northern (Richelieu) wing of the palace, which it had occupied for over a hundred years, since the time of the Duc de Morny, Napoleon III's minister, to new premises at Bercy. As the opening of the new entrance to the museum under I. M. Pei's glass pyramid had signalled the completion of the first phase of the project, so the opening of the north wing (also designed by Pei) on November 18, 1993 marked the successful completion of the second. This doubled the exhibition space available to the museum from 30,000 sq.m/323,000 sq.ft to 60,000 sq.m/646,000 sq.ft, giving it room to display over 30,000 exhibits. In the final phase, which is due to be completed by 1997, the existing rooms in the south wing are to be reorganized, and the exhibits in the Denon and Sully wings, apart from the large works in the Greek collection, are to be rearranged. At the same time the construction of the Carrousel du Louvre, the underground facilities to be provided under the courtyard round the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (an underground parking lot with over 700 places, a service center with shops, restaurants and function rooms, all to be privately run), to be linked with the museum's reception area, will be pushed ahead. In addition the facades of the palace will be restored and the Jardin du Carrousel replanted.
With the reopening of the remodelled rooms on the first floor of the Sully wing round the Cour Carrée in December 1992 the planned rearrangement of the Louvre's picture collections began. In future they are to be displayed in national schools, since French painting accounts for more than half the museum's holdings. The schools of northern Europe will be shown in the north (Richelieu) wing; the southern schools, as hitherto, will be in the south (Denon) wing; and French painting will be mainly in the Sully wing round the Cour Carrée. The present division into seven departments - Oriental (including Islamic) art, Egyptian (including Coptic) art, Greek, Etruscan and Roman art, sculpture, painting, applied and decorative art and graphic art - will be retained, though the separation of genres will not be absolutely rigid. Sculpture will be displayed mainly on the ground floor of the Denon and Richelieu wings, and painting and graphic art will be brought closer together.
The Palais du Louvre stands on the site of the medieval stronghold built on the right bank of the Seine by Philippe II (Philippe Auguste) about the year 1200. This side of the river was then known as Lupara, which later became Louvre. Remains of Philippe Auguste's fortress can be seen on the mezzanine level below the Cour Carrée. Louis IX (St Louis) added a large hall and extended the crypt (excavation finds on mezzanine level); then in the reign of Louis V Raymond du Temple enlarged the castle still further, and in 1360 the king moved into it, although the palace on the Ile de la Cité remained his official residence. Until the reign of Henri II the French kings lived omly sporadically in their town palace. Detailed evidence on the history of the building in the time of Charles V is provided by the "Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry", the prayer-book illuminated by the Limburg brothers. In the 15th century the Louvre served mainly as an arsenal for the storage of weapons, since the kings preferred to live in their châteaux on the Loire. Then in the first half of the 16th century François I, the "Renaissance king", took an interest in the palace. He had the keep pulled down and commissioned the architect Pierre Lescot and the sculptor Jean Goujon, following Italian models, to build the halves of the west and south wings of the Old Louvre which meet at a right angle round the present Cour Carrée. After François' death these parts were completed by Lescot and Goujon, and in 1566 they were extended by the Petite Galerie (at right angles to Lescot's south wing). At almost the same time (1564 onwards), after the death of Henri II, the Tuileries Palace was built as a residence for his widow Catherine de Médicis only 500m/550yds west of the Old Louvre (along the present Avenue du Général-Lemonnier). In the reign of Henri IV this palace was linked by the long south wing along the Seine, the Galerie du Bord de l'Eau, with the Petite Galerie. After the murder of Henri IV his widow moved to the Palais du Luxembourg. Their son Louis XIII completed the Cour Carrée and the Pavillon Sully. Louis XIV commissioned Le Brun and Le Vau to remodel the Petite Galerie and Claude Perrault to build a monumental facade on the east wing, now known as the Colonnade. Both the Louvre and the Tuileries were occupied only for short periods, and after Louis XIV moved his residence to Versailles they fell into such a state of dilapidation that in the mid 17th century consideration was given to their possible demolition. Louis XV, however, began the process of renovation. At this time the idea first emerged of bringing together in the Louvre the royal collections of masterpieces of art. In 1776 the Grande Galerie was declared a museum. During the Revolution, on May 26 1791, the people were able for the first time to see the royal apartments. Napoleon enlarged the courtyard in front of the Tuileries (now the Jardin du Louvre and Place and Square du Carrousel) and set up in its center the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and also began the construction of the north wing along Rue de Rivoli. In the reign of Napoleon III the Louvre and the Tuileries were joined up, and Baron Haussmann laid out the Jardin du Louvre and Place and Square du Carrousel in their present form. Only a few years later, however, on May 23, 1871, the Tuileries Palace was burned down by the Commune. Fortunately the fire was extinguished before it reached the Louvre, but the Tuileries was completely destroyed and was not rebuilt. Finally in autumn 1981 President Mitterand initiated the ambitious project to make the Louvre the biggest museum in the world, the Grand Louvre, which was to be a temple of culture worthy of the historic site on which it stood.