The apartments of Napoleon III at the Louvre

Today we visited the Louvre and viewed the Napoleon III Apartments which were built for the ministry of state between 1852 and1857 as part of a larger project to connect the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace, thus making an enclosed square of the Tuileries and the Louvre. As far as I can tell, these “apartments” were meant for visiting VIPs like heads of state, not for Napoleon III himself. The picture above shows a bedroom, the whole affair was fitted out in Louis IV style as you will see below.

The job was directed by Napoleon III, who still lived in the Tuileries and let the public into the Louvre to see the Art collection. He also added the two bits inside the courtyard, designed to conceal the fact that the two long galleries aren’t parallel.

The whole job was finished, and all the streets in the middle demolished, by 1865; just in time for the fall of the Empire in 1870. During the suppression of the Commune in 1871, some the communists burned down the Tuileries Palace. On 23 May 1871, during the suppression of the Paris Commune, twelve men under the orders of the cummune leader, Dardell, set the Tuileries on fire at 7 p.m., using petroleum, liquid tar and turpentine. The fire lasted for forty-eight hours and entirely consumed the palace. The dome itself was blown up by explosives placed in the central pavilion and detonated by the converging fires. In 1882 the French national assembly voted to demolish the ruin and it was done in 1883. Today they are thinking of rebuilding it at a cost of 380 million dollars to expand the space for the Louvre collection. All of the furniture and paintings were saved from the fire due to the Franco-Prussian war and are still in storage.

In 1983, French President François Mitterrand proposed the Grand Louvre plan to renovate the building and move the Finance Ministry out, allowing displays throughout the building. To say the least the apartments are opulent, take a look for yourself: