Napoleon III's Louvre expansion

The expansion of the Louvre under Napoleon III in the 1850s, known at the time and until the 1980s as the Nouveau Louvre^[1][2][3] or Louvre de Napoléon III,^[4] was an iconic project of the Second French Empire and a centerpiece of its ambitious transformation of Paris.^[5] Its design was initially produced by Louis Visconti and, after Visconti's death in late 1853, modified and executed by Hector-Martin Lefuel. It represented the completion of a centuries-long project, sometimes referred to as the grand dessein ("grand design"), to connect the old Louvre Palace around the Cour Carrée with the Tuileries Palace to the west. Following the Tuileries' arson at the end of the Paris Commune in 1871 and demolition a decade later, Napoleon III's nouveau Louvre became the eastern end of Paris's axe historique centered on the Champs-Élysées.

The project was initially intended for mixed ceremonial, museum, housing, military and administrative use, including the offices of the ministère d’Etat and ministère de la Maison de l'Empereur which after 1871 were attributed to the Finance Ministry. Since 1993, all its spaces have been used by the Louvre Museum.

Following the French Revolution of 1848, the provisional government adopted a decree on the continuation of the rue de Rivoli toward the east and the completion of the Louvre Palace's north wing, building on the steps taken to that effect under Napoleon. Architect Louis Visconti and his disciple Émile Trélat produced a draft design for completing the entire palace and presented it to the Legislative Assembly in 1849.^[2]: 155  These plans were not implemented, however, until President Louis-Napoleon was in a position to prioritize them following his successful coup d'état on 2 December 1851, even before he would formally rebrand himself as Emperor Napoleon III.^[5] On Napoleon III's order, Minister François-Xavier Joseph de Casabianca commissioned Visconti to design the new Louvre's plans on 30 January 1852,^[6] and the first stone was laid on 25 July 1852.^[2]: 155

After Visconti died of a heart attack on 29 December 1853, Hector-Martin Lefuel, by then the architect of the Palace of Fontainebleau, was appointed to replace him. Lefuel modified Visconti's project, keeping its broad architectural outlines but opting for a considerably more exuberant decoration program that came to define the nouveau Louvre in the eyes of many observers. Old houses and other buildings that still encroached on the central space of the Louvre-Tuileries complex, between the Cour Carrée and the place du Carrousel, were swept clear. The project was swiftly executed, under the close attention of Napoleon III who visited the works on multiple occasions.^[6]: 14-15  The new buildings were substantially completed at the time of their inauguration by the emperor on 14 August 1857.^[4] The next day, which was the National Day as the date of "Saint-Napoléon [fr]", the public was invited to roam the new buildings.^[6]: 17

The young American architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had studied under Lefuel at the École des Beaux-Arts, worked on the Louvre as a junior architect between April 1854 and September 1855, as also did Italian architect Marco Treves from May 1854 to September 1857.^[7] Following Hunt's graduation, Lefuel made him inspector of the Louvre work and allowed him to design the façade of the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque facing the rue de Rivoli.^[8]

• 
  One of many earlier unrealized proposals for the completion of the Louvre, by Percier and Fontaine (1807 or 1808)
 
• 
  Plan of the unfinished Louvre by Charles Vasserot, showing the jumble of buildings on the location of the present-day Cour Napoléon (1830)
 
• 
  Design of the Louvre expansion by Louis Visconti (1853)

• 
  Visconti presents the plans for the Nouveau Louvre to Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie in 1853 at the Tuileries, painting by Jean-Baptiste-Ange Tissier (1865)
 
• 
  Engraving dedicated "to His Majesty the Emperor" showcasing Visconti's design, by Rudolf Pfnor (1853)
 
• 
  Celebratory tapestry cartoon^[4] showing the expanded Louvre between a cherub holding a ribbon inscribed with "LE LOUVRE DE NAPOLEON III" (lower left) and two angels holding the Emperor's profile (upper right), by Victor Chavet [fr] (1857); now at the Louvre

The Nouveau Louvre mostly consists of two sets of buildings or wings, on the northern and southern sides of the central space that is now called the Cour Napoléon. The new buildings were structured around a sequence of pavilions that were given names of French statesmen from the Ancien Régime (North Wing) and the Napoleonic era (South Wing), still used to this day: from the northwest to the southwest, pavillon Turgot, pavillon Richelieu, pavillon Colbert, pavillon Sully (the project's new name for the pre-existing pavillon de l'Horloge), pavillon Daru topping the eponymous staircase, pavillon Denon, and pavillon Mollien also featuring a monumental staircase.^[2]: 155  (From 1989, the names of the three central pavilions have also been given to the entire respective wings of the Louvre museum complex. Thus, the Louvre's North Wing is now known as aile Richelieu, its eastern square of buildings around the Cour Carrée is the aile Sully, and the South Wing is the aile Denon.)

Lefuel created two octagonal gardens at the center of the Cour Napoléon (now replaced by the Louvre Pyramid). In multiple parts of the project, Napoleon III emphasized his role as continuator of the great French monarchs of the past, and as the one who completed their unfinished work. On both sides of the Pavillon Sully, black marble plaques bear gilded inscriptions that read, respectively: "1541. François Ier commence le Louvre. 1564. Catherine de Médicis commence les Tuileries," and "1852–1857. Napoléon III réunit les Tuileries au Louvre."^[2]: 156  Separately, Napoleon III created a Musée des Souverains in the Louvre's Colonnade Wing to similarly emphasize the continuity of his rule with the long legacy of French monarchy and thus bolster his legitimacy.

The Louvre expansion shortly after its completion, photographed by Édouard Baldus (late 1850s)

On the eastern side of the Cour Napoléon, the project entailed no new building but rather the exterior refacing of the pre-existing palace whose interior rooms were left unchanged. For the central pavillon de l'Horloge's new western façade, Visconti took inspiration from both its eastern side designed by Jacques Lemercier in the 1620s and from the central pavilion of the Tuileries Palace, itself influenced by Lemercier's. The same inspiration shaped the pavilions named after Richelieu and Denon on the Cour Napoléon's northern and southern sides. Lefuel transformed Visconti's understated original design and added a profusion of elaborate sculptural detail. Despite being criticized by a number of observers, e.g. by Ludovic Vitet,^[9] Prosper Mérimée and Horace de Viel-Castel,^[6]: 17-18  Lefuel's treatment of the square-dome-roofed pavilions became a seminal model for Second Empire architecture in France and elsewhere.

Inside the North Wing were prestige apartments for some of the regime's principal figures, including those of the Minister of State (long mistakenly attributed to the Duke of Morny and now known as the appartements Napoléon III),^[10]: 7  served by a monumental staircase later known as the escalier du ministre; administrative offices for the ministère d'Etat, the short-lived ministère de l'Algérie et des Colonies (1858–1860),^[6]: 18  the ministère de la Maison de l'Empereur (separated from the ministère d'Etat in 1860),^[11] and (briefly) the ministère des Beaux-Arts created in early 1870;^[12][13] the Directorate of Telegraphs;^[6]: 18  barracks for the Imperial Guard;^[14]: 35  and the Bibliothèque du Louvre (formerly bibliothèque impériale under Napoleon and bibliothèque du Cabinet du Roi under the Restoration^[6]: 20 ), personal property of the emperor but open to the public, on the upper floor between the Pavillon Richelieu and the rue de Rivoli.^[2]: 176  The latter was acceded by the monumental escalier de la Bibliothèque (known since the late 19th century as escalier Lefuel), with sculpted decoration by Lefuel's friend Marie-Noémi Cadiot.^[15] Initial plans to locate the Minister of the Interior in the North Wing's eastern half were abandoned in the late 1850s.^[10]: 24

The South Wing was largely devoted to a series of new spaces for the Louvre Museum that were dubbed the Nouveau Musée Impérial.^[6]: 22  These included, on the upper ground floor, a new entrance lobby flanked by two long stone-clad galleries, respectively named after Napoleon's ministers Pierre Daru (Galerie Daru) and Nicolas François, Count Mollien (Galerie Mollien), with the monumental staircases bearing those same names at both ends; and on the first floor, high-ceilinged exhibition rooms for large paintings, the Salle Daru and salle Mollien, with the Pavillon Denon in the middle, whose lavish interior decoration was completed in 1866.^[16]: 272  On the same floor, between the Pavillon Denon and the Grande Galerie, Lefuel created a large Estates Hall (Salle des États) for state events and ceremonies.