A royal palace turned into the world's most visited museum.
Paris, France Founded 1793
The Louvre was a fortress and then a palace of the kings of France before it opened as a public museum in 1793, during the French Revolution. Today it is the most visited museum in the world.
Its galleries run from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to European painting of the nineteenth century, and its Department of Islamic Art is one of the finest in Europe. I. M. Pei's glass pyramid has been the entrance since 1989.
Art
Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Art
5,000 years of art on Fifth Avenue.
Art
Treasures of the Chinese emperors, carried across the sea.
Art
1,400 years of Islamic art in I. M. Pei's desert fortress.
Art
Michelangelo's ceiling and the art of the popes.
Art
One family's collection from the court of Hyderabad.
Art
A pink stone palace by the Arabian Sea.
Art
A rain of light under a floating dome.
Art
Catherine the Great's collection in the Winter Palace.