Louvre Pyramid
— — a triangle of glass in a square of stone.
Not only on a wall.
“Glass and steel set down in a courtyard that had held only stone for four centuries. I. M. Pei's pyramid opened to the public in 1989. It was controversial then and beloved now. Twenty-one metres high, square at the base, sharp at the apex. The light comes down through it into the lobby; people queue beneath it, by it, in its reflection in the fountains. The old palace stands on all four sides. The Mona Lisa is downstairs. The line the geometry makes against the Renaissance facades is the photograph everyone takes, and it works every time.
Louvre Pyramid, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Louvre Pyramid stands in the Cour Napoléon, the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The square glass-and-steel structure rises 21.6 metres above the cobbled courtyard, with each side of its base measuring 35 metres. It was commissioned in 1984 by President François Mitterrand as the centrepiece of the Grand Louvre project, the largest of his Grands Travaux. Since 30 March 1989 it has served as the main entrance to the museum, leading visitors down into the underground Hall Napoléon, where they fan out toward the Denon, Sully, and Richelieu wings. Three smaller pyramids of the same form surround it; an inverted pyramid hangs over the Carrousel du Louvre shopping concourse below.
The architect Ieoh Ming Pei, then in his late sixties and best known for the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, was selected by Mitterrand in 1983 without an open competition. His pyramid is built from 603 rhombus-shaped and 70 triangular panes of low-iron glass, supported by a steel and aluminium frame that disappears behind the panes when the sun hits them from the side. The geometry deliberately answers the proportions of the courtyard around it: the Renaissance and Second Empire facades of the Lescot Wing, the Pavillon de l'Horloge, and the Richelieu and Denon wings. The contrast was widely opposed when the project was announced; much of the French press called it disfiguring. By the late 1990s the argument was over.
The Louvre is open every day except Tuesday, with extended hours on Friday evenings. The Pyramid is the most photographed entrance but slowest in peak hours; the Carrousel du Louvre entrance on Rue de Rivoli and the Passage Richelieu, available to ticket-holders, are usually faster. Tickets are timed; advance booking through louvre.fr is required and sells out for the busiest days. The closest Métro stop is Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre, on lines 1 and 7. The Pyramid itself can be approached and photographed from the courtyard at any hour, and is lit from within at night.