I'm Louvre-ing It! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte

During Napoleon's reign, he gave the building the name Musée Napoleon. After his downfall in 1814, certain paintings were returned to their owners and the museum was renamed the Louvre.

Answer: St. Bartholomew

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day is considered the Louvre's most tragic event. On August 24, 1572 in the courtyard of the Louvre, Catherine de Medici had 3,000 Protestants including Admiral Gaspard de Coligny massacred at three in the morning. This act was carried out because Catherine de Medici saw Admiral Coligny's influence on France becoming greater than her son, Charles IX, influence on France.

Answer: Paris

The full name of the Louvre is Musée de Louvre. The museum officially opened its doors on August 10, 1793. Within the Louvre, there are seventy thousand pieces of art and two thousand employees. The Louvre has six hundred and fifty thousand square feet of gallery space.

Answer: Sequestration

When the Nazis moved into Paris during WWII, movable artwork and sculptures inside the Louvre were moved out in caravans for protection. What couldn't be moved out of the Louvre due to heaviness was covered in heavy burlap sacks. When the Nazis realized the Louvre had been abandoned, they used the empty parts of the building to catalog and ship the art they stole from French families, most of them Jewish families.

This Nazi act was known as the Louvre sequestration. Today, this act is still seen as the greatest cultural theft in history.

Answer: True

When the Louvre opened its doors in 1793, it held five hundred paintings confiscated from French royals and nobility.

Answer: King Francis I

King Francis I had the Louvre reconstructed in 1527 in a Renaissance style. The reconstruction took a century because of the new wings and buildings. European architects were hired to do the reconstruction. Francis had work gathered from Titian, Raphael, da Vinci, Cellini, Del Piombo, d'Abbate, and Primaticcio hung in the Louvre.

Answer: Fortress

The Louvre was originally a fortress built by King Philip II of France. The king wanted a ninety-eight foot tower, a moat and an arsenal built against the Seine as protection from the north. As time went on the borders lengthened and the fortress was abandoned as a defensive structure. Parts of the fortress can be seen in the Louvre's lower hall.

Answer: Seine

The Louvre is located on the right bank of the Seine River between the Tuileries Gardens and the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois church. Henry IV had several new buildings built that extend more than 1,350 feet beside the Seine. During Henry IV's reign, river pageants on the Seine could be seen from the gallery windows.

Answer: Mona Lisa

The "Mona Lisa" was taken by an Italian criminal who kept the painting for two years before it was discovered again. Previously, the painting hung on Napoleon's wall pre-exile. In 1913, the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre where it stayed for fifty years. In the early 1960's first lady Jackie Kennedy asked the Louvre for the Mona Lisa to be toured through the United States.

Answer: I.M. Pei

The glass pyramid was designed by Ieoh Ming Pei. Born in Canton, China, I.M. Pei became an American citizen in 1935. Pei's pyramid was designed in transparent glass to bring all the colors of the Paris sky into the world's oldest museum. Pei's pyramid is located in the courtyard of Napoleon on the grounds of the Louvre.

The pyramid is set on steel, which doesn't reflect light very well and surrounded by waterfalls to complete the landscape design.