The Louvre Pyramid

In the previous post, we were talking about the pyramids in Egypt. Today we are going to talk about pyramids again. But these pyramids are in France.

In 1980s French President, François Mitterrand, proposed the Grand Louvre plan. The idea of the plan was to turn the Louvre into the largest art collection in the world. There was a competition for the best project. The winner of the competition was an architect Ieoh Ming Pei. His project was a large glass pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace.

This project divided French society into two groups. The conservative part of the society was categorically against this project. Proponents of the project said that the Louvre itself consists of many buildings built over the centuries in a variety of styles, and the injection of modernity would not hurt it. But in the end, after the project was completed, the great pyramid became one of the French symbols.

This pyramid is a construction that is made of glass and steel. The special lightning lets to see the underground entrance hall. The height of the pyramid is 22 meters, and the base length is 35 meters.

Actually, the main purpose of this pyramid isn’t aesthetic. In that time, the main entrance of the Louvre was extremely overloaded and simply could not cope with the increasing influx of tourists every year. So cash desks, wardrobes, toilets were moved to the space under the pyramid. The huge hall located under the pyramid serves as a center for information about the museum, from here on the escalator you can climb to all galleries of the Louvre or go down to the inner rooms. After the pyramid was built, the number of visitors increased three times.

There was a rumor that the pyramid consists of 666 glass parts which make it devilish. But in reality, this pyramid consists of 603 glass rhombuses and 70 glass triangles that in total are 673 glass parts.