The Louvre is the noblest monument of the French Renaissance. From the
time of St. Louis onward, the French kings began to live more and more in
the northern suburb, the town of the merchants, which now assumed the name
of La Ville, in contradistinction to the Cite and the Universite. Two of
their chief residences here were the Bastille and the Hotel St. Paul, both
now demolished--one, on the Place so called; the other, between the Rue
St. Antoine and the Quai des Celestins. But from a very early period they
also possest a chateau on the site of the Louvre, and known by the same
name, which guarded the point where the wall of Philippe Auguste abutted
on the river. Francois I. decided to pull down this picturesque turreted
medieval castle, erected by Philippe Auguste and altered by Charles V. He
began the construction in its place of a magnificent Renaissance palace,
which has ever since been in course of erection.

Its subsequent growth, however, is best explained opposite the building
itself, where attention can be duly called to the succession of its
salient features. But a visit to the exterior fabric of the Louvre should
be preceded by one to St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church, and
practically the chapel, of the old Louvre, to which it stood in somewhat
the same relation as the Ste. Chapelle to the home of St. Louis. Note,
however, that the church was situated just within the ancient wall, while
the chateau lay outside it. The visitor will doubtless be tolerably
familiar by this time with some parts at least of the exterior of the
Louvre; but he will do well to visit it now systematically, in the order
here suggested, so as to gain a clear general idea of its history and
meaning....

Begin by understanding distinctly that this court is the real and original
Louvre; the rest is mere excresence, intended to unite the main building
with the Tuileries, which lay some hundreds of yards to the west of it.