It is not part of the museum, and it is not a university. It is a school of the French Ministry of Culture, and it has always lived inside the Louvre.
At a glance
The École du Louvre was founded in 1882 and teaches art history, archaeology, epigraphy, anthropology and museology. It is a higher education establishment of the French Ministry of Culture, separate from the museum, and it has occupied the Flore wing of the Louvre palace since 1998. Its library is older than the wing it sits in: it was created with the school in 1882 and has been in the Flore wing since 1972.
Key facts
- Founded: 1882
- Teaches: art history, archaeology, epigraphy, anthropology, museology
- Status: an establishment of the French Ministry of Culture, not of the museum
- In the Flore wing: since 1998, fitted out that year by the architect Antoine Stinco
- Before 1998: rooms facing the Seine under the Grande Galerie, and around the court now called cour Visconti
- Library: created 1882, in the Flore wing since 1972, overhauled in 2021
- GPS: 48.8609, 2.3310 · Open in Google Maps
History
The school was founded in 1882, in the years when France was building its museum profession, and it was put inside the palace from the start. For more than a century it worked in rooms along the Seine, beneath the Grande Galerie, and around the inner court that is now the cour Visconti.
Those rooms were wanted for the museum. The Grand Louvre, the rebuilding that ran through the 1980s and 1990s and gave the palace its glass pyramid, took the whole building apart and put it back together around the visitor. The school had to move, and in 1998 it was installed in the Flore wing, the long range that runs west along the river and ends in the Pavillon de Flore. The architect Antoine Stinco fitted out the new premises.
The library
The library was created at the same time as the school, in 1882, and refurbished in 1932. It has been in the Flore wing since 1972, a quarter of a century before the school joined it there. It was refurbished again in 1998 with the move, and given a major overhaul in 2021.
What you see
From the Tuileries garden the Flore wing reads as the river edge of the palace, closed at its western end by the Pavillon de Flore, a tall pavilion of coupled columns and carved stone that was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. The school is behind that front, and there is nothing from the garden to tell you it is there: a working school occupying the inside of a monument whose outside belongs to everyone.
Sources & resources
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