Inside the Palace at the Louvre
From Paris Hotels Reviews
From the Hall Napoléon, under the glass pyramid, it’s easy to be lured straight into the Denon wing and its super-celebrity collection of Italian paintings. But if you take the entrance marked “Sully” instead, you can reach the same section of the museum while passing through some of the finest rooms remaining from the days when the Louvre was a palace rather than a museum.
On the lowest level of the Sully wing you can continue through to the Louvre’s medieval foundations, or take the Henri II staircase up to the Renaissance Salle des Caryatides, on the ground floor. Up again, on the first floor, there’s a succession of finely decorated rooms: the Vestibule Henri II, where the gilded sixteenth-century ceiling is graced with George Braque’s The Birds (room 33); the Salle des Sept Cheminées, once the royal bedroom (room 74); and the Rotonde d’Apollon (off room 34), built for Louis XIV by Le Vau, the architect of Versailles. Most stunning of all is the golden Galerie d’Apollon (room 66), its utterly splendid décor conceived by Carles Le Brun in 1661. It represents Louis XIV (the Sun King) as Apollo (the sun god), Eugéne Delacroix adding his Apollo Slaying the Serpent Python to the central medallion of the ceiling in 1851. Set in a glass case amid the splendour are the crown jewels of France, including the mammoth Regent diamond sported by Louis XV, Louis XVI, Charles X and Napoleon I. It’s particularly atmospheric at night. From here you can skirt the grand Escalier Daru to enter the Italian painting section, passing through the lofty Salon Carré (room 3) on you way to the Grande Galerie (room 5-12).
For architectural gems from the grand Third Empire remodeling, seek out the Salle du Manége on the ground floor of Denon (room A), and the Apartements Napoléon III on the first floor of Richelieu. Apart from the Hall Napoléon, under the main pyramid, the highlights of the Louvre’s most recent transformation, under I.M. Pei, are the Pyramide Inversée in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping complex, the two glazed-over courtyards of the Richelieu wing and the magnificent escalator climbing alongside the Cour Puget.
