Churches of Rome

The round church of Santo Stefano Rotondo al Celio is fronted with an entrance portico added in the 12th century. The main body of the church is a reduced version of the original structure, which was built in the 5th century, probably the 460s. The current outer wall was initially a ring of free-standing columns on the same lines as the inner ring and you can still see the columns embedded in the wall from the inside. The ring was surrounded by a screen- and outer wall so that the total number of rings came up to four.  The columns cutting across the inner diameter were added in the 12th century to support the roof and walls. The church has a wooden roof and is not domed. 

Santi Giovanni e Paolo was rebuilt after the Norman sack of 1084 and completed around 1150. The interior is in baroque style and was created in 1715-18, but the exterior was mostly untouched and was further restored in 1950-52. A domed chapel was added in 1851. The church has a bell tower, which rests on stone, which once supported an ancient temple and is decorated with ceramic tiles with Arabic inscriptions imported from Malaga. The current tiles are copies. The original church was built in the 4th century. 

Santa Maria in Trastevere was rebuilt in 1140 but the original church was probably built as early as the fourth century. The columns of the nave were taken from Roman ruins, probably the Baths of Caracalla. The portico in front of the facade was added by Carlo Fontana in 1702. New frescoes were added to the level of the windows and in the pediment in 1865-66 but these have all badly faded. The mosaic under the pediment and bell tower are both from the rebuilding in the 12th century. The brick facade bends outwards to prevent the figures in the mosaic from looking foreshortened. 

The facade of Santa Maria in Aracoeli was never completed. The church was consecrated in 1268, and plans to decorate the front were entertained for centuries until it was finally given up in the 19th century. Holes for scaffolding poles are still visible. The upper parts of the front curves outward to prevent the now lost frescoes from looking foreshortened. The arch above the main entrance also had a fresco added in 1465, the main window had a baroque frame with another fresco above, and the front has also been decorated with a medieval clock. The building incorporates some elements from a previous church stemming from the 8th century.

The facade of the minor basilica of San Marco was added in 1465-70, to a renaissance design attributed to Alberti or Francesco del Borgo. The church was originally built around 833 and may have replaced a previous church dating all the way back to 336. The bell tower was added in 1154, while the interior is mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. The extension of Palazzo Venezia in the 15th century is built around the church. The arches in the loggia were previously blocked off with windows inserted, and the Palazzetto Venezia (left) originally stood to the right of the church. 

Santa Maria del Popolo was built in 1472-77 and replaced a previous church from 1235. The architects were probably Baccio Pontelli and Andrea Bregno. The facade was somewhat modified in 1655-60 by Bernini, but is still a good example of early Roman renaissance. The apse was extended by Bramante circa 1501. The church is hemmed in by buildings added in the early 19th century.

Sant'Agostino was completed in 1484. The facade was completed by Giacomo di Pietrasanta and is supposed to be based on a design by Alberti. The stone is said to have been taken from the Colosseum. The new building incorporated a previous parish church known as San Trifone in Posterula, which was only demolished in the 18th century. The building of a new church started already in 1296 and was completed in 1446. It was subsequently rebuilt on a larger scale in 1479-84. The church was reoriented to face Via Recta, an ancient road and main access route for pilgrims to the Vatican. Traces of the old route still exist in Via delle Coppelle, Via S Agostino and Via dei Coronari. 

San Pietro in Montorio was built in 1481 to 1500 to designs by Baccio Pontelli and Meo del Caprina. The stairway was added in 1605. There had previously been a chapel from the 9th century and a convent from the 12th century on the site. A medieval tradition held that St. Peter was crucified on this spot but this claim has since been discarded. The church is famous for the presence of the Tempietto in the courtyard of the adjoining monastery.

San Pietro in Vincoli was built in 432-40 and may have replaced an even older church. The old structure is largely intact despite successive restorations. The facade is a screen: the portico was built in 1475 and has been attributed to Baccio Pontelli. It was originally topped with a sloping tiled roof until the second storey was added in 1578.  

Il Gesù is the main church of the Society of Jesus. Construction started in 1568 to designs by Giacomo da Vignola but was altered after his death in 1573 by Giacomo della Porta. The church was finally consecrated in 1584. The interior was redecorated in the baroque style in the second half of the 17th century. A previous church called Santa Maria della Strada stood just south of the present building. The first documentary evidence is from 1337 but the church could have been built earlier. Another church, dedicated to Sant'Andrea, was replaced with the Jesuit convent.

Santa Maria ai Monti was completed in 1580 to designs by Giacomo della Porta. It has a similar facade and dome to Il Gesù, which also was designed by della Porta. Work on the church was completed by Carlo Lombardi and Flaminio Ponzio.

The church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti has an unusual facade for Rome, possibly due to the fact that construction was originally begun in a French gothic style in 1502. It is not known exactly who is responsible for the final Italianate design but it has been suggested that the concept originated with Giacomo della Porta. The church was finally completed in 1585 and the double staircase (not the Spanish steps) was added by Domenico Fontana.

The benediction loggia of San Giovanni in Laterano was designed by Domenico Fontana in 1586, though some modifications were later added by Guiseppe Valadier. Fontana also designed the facades of the adjacent Lateran Palace. 

The national church of France was completed in 1589 with a facade most probably designed by Giacomo della Porta. The statues in the niches were added in 1746. Construction of a French national church began in 1518 and was initially intended as a round church designed by a French architect. This design was possibly inspired by the Tempietto but the project was abandoned after the sack of Rome in 1527. 

Santa Maria in Vallicella, more commonly known as Chiesa Nuova, was built in 1575-1606. It replaced a parish church, which may have been from as early as the late 6th century though the earliest source of the church's existence is from 1179.  Several architects oversaw construction at various points, including Giovanni Matteo da Città di Castello, Giacomo della Porta and Martino Longhi the Elder. The façade was designed by Fausto Rughesi. The dome was finished by Pietro da Cortona in 1650. The bell tower was designed in 1666 by Camillo Arcucci. The adjoining Oratory was designed by Francesco Borromino and built in 1637-66. This was a rebuilding of a previous structure designed for the same purpose by Martino Longhi the Elder in 1572.

The church of Santa Susanna was built in its present form in 1593-1603 to designs by Carlo Maderno. The first church on this site was probably built in the fourth century and was restored and embellished and then entirely rebuilt in the eighth. The Quirinal hill was subsequently abandoned and Santa Susanna was the only standing church to be left there. Nevertheless, the structure was rebuilt again some time in 1471-84. 

The church front of St Peter's Basilica was built in 1608-14. The architect Carlo Maderno had originally planned to include towers at either end of the facade but work was stopped in 1621 because the ground had subsided. Bernini made a second attempt in 1639 but this was also unsuccessful and the bell tower that was built had to be demolished in 1646. Clocks were installed in place of the towers by Giuseppe Valadier in 1790.   

San Bartolomeo all'Isola was built on the Tiber island in 998, by orders by the Holy Roman Emperor, on the foundations of an ancient temple. It was for a time the cathedral of the diocese of Santa Rufina. The church suffered repeated flooding and the bell tower is from a restoration campaign in 1118-80. Subsequent flood led to the abandonment of the church for 25 years in the 16th century. However, the church was restored again in 1583 and the facade was added in 1624, to a design by Martino Longhi the younger.  

Santa Maria della Vittoria was built in 1608-1626. The original architect was Carlo Maderno but the facade was designed by Giovanni Battista Soria. Most of the baroque interior is from the 18th century. 

The facade of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi was completed in 1638 and is generally attributed to Martino Longhi the younger. Some modifications were made by Cristoforo Schor in 1695. The church was rebuilt in 1624-38 and replaced a previous church from the 15th century.

The facade of Santa Maria della Pace was designed by Pietro da Cortona and built in 1656-61. This was part of a rebuilding that was completed in 1667. The church was originally built in the 1480s to a design which has been ascribed to Baccio Pontelli. It replaced a previous church from the middle ages, named Sant'Andrea de Aquarizariis.

Sant'Andrea della Valle was built for the Theatines in 1591-1650. Work was interrupted between 1603 and 1608, after which Carlo Maderno became the main architect. The facade was added in 1655-65 to revised version of Maderno's design by Carlo Rainaldi. 

Santi Luca e Martina was completed in 1664 to designs by Pietro da Cortona after almost thirty years of construction. It replaced a previous church on this site from the 6th or 7th centuries.

Santa Maria in Campitelli was built in 1659-67 to a design by Carlo Rainaldi. The icon inside was believed to have saved the city from plague in 1656. This belief led to the decision to build a new church even though the previous one had been consecrated as late as 1648.  

San Bernardo alle Terme was once part of the complex of the baths of Diocletian, completed in 306. It was converted into a church in 1598, but the stucco facade appears to be from a restoration in 1670 

The facade of Sant'Agnese in Agone was completed in 1672. Originally designed by Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi, Francesco Borromini took over in 1653, and further modifications were made to his design by Gianlorenzo Bernini and Carlo Rainaldi after Borromini resigned in 1657. A previous church on the site was consecrated in 1123.

Sant'Andrea al Quirinale was built in 1658-78 to designs by Gianlorenzo Bernini. The church plan is elliptical. The facade was only added after the death of Pope Alexander VII, due to his insistence that the front should be screened off from the street by a wall. Sant'Andrea al Quirinale replaced a previous church of unknown origins called Sant'Andrea in Monte Cavallo, rebuilt by the Jesuits in 1568.  

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane was begun by Francesco Borromini in 1638 but the project stalled and  work on the facade only started in 1665. The architect committed suicide two years later and work was continued by his nephew. The church was finally completed in 1682. The fountains referred to in the name of the church predates it and were built in 1593.

Santa Maria in Montesanto and Santa Maria dei Miracoli were originally designed by Carlo Rainaldi. Work started in 1662 but was interrupted after the death of Pope Alexander VII in 1667. Work resumed on Montesanto in 1671 under the direction of Carlo Fontana and the church was completed in 1673. Rainaldi continued work on Santa Maria dei Miracoli in 1675-77 but it was again left to Fontana to complete it, which he did in 1678. 

The facade of San Francesco a Ripa was completed in 1689 to a design by Mattia de Rossi. This was part of a rebuilding project of a church from the 13th century.

The present facade of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere was designed in 1725 by Ferdinando Fuga, but the portico is much older and contains ancient Roman columns erected on this site in the 12th century. The balustrade on top and was added by Fuga. The bell tower was built in 1140 and the fabric of the church behind the facade is, despite several re-designs, mostly from the 9th century. The first church on the site was probably built in the 5th century though the legend of Santa Cecilia dates it to the 3rd. 

The facade of La Maddalena, or Santa Maria Maddalena in Campo Marzio to give its full title, was completed in 1735. The main body of the church was built in 1669-98 by architects Carlo Fontana and Carlo Quadri. The facade was probably designed by either Giuseppe Sardi or Manuel Rodriguez Dos Santos. It is regarded as the only true rococo facade in Rome. There has been a church on this location since 1586.

San Giovanni in Laterano is named 'the mother of all churches' and is the cathedral of Rome. It has been the seat of the Roman bishop since 312. The facade was added in 1736 and was designed by Alessandro Galilei. The building has been destroyed in earthquakes and fires and the present structure is mostly the result of restorations in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The facade of Santa Maria Maggiore is a screen designed by Ferdinando Fuga and was added in 1743. It obscures an earlier facade from the 12th century. The church is actually from the 5th century,  but has been restored, repaired after earthquakes and redecorated at various stages in time. The bell tower is from the 14th century. The palatial wings on either side of the facade were added in 1605 to a design by Flaminio Ponzio (right) and in 1743 when Fuga copied this design to maintain symmetry (left).

Santa Croce in Gerusalemme was rebuilt in 1741-44 by architects Domenico Gregorini and Pietro Passalacqua while the bell tower was built during a previous rebuilding in 1144-45. but some of the external walls are from the original church, which may have been built as early as 330. The first documentary evidence of the church's existence is from 501. Santa Croce is one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome.

The facade of Santi Quaranti Martiri e San Pasquale Baylon in Trastevere was built in 1747 to a design by Giuseppe Sardi. A previous church was built in the early middle ages and restored in 1608. The new 18th century church was built for a reform movement of Franciscan friars.

  

The facade of Santa Maria in Aquiro was added in 1774 by Pietro Camporese the elder. The building of the rest of the church mainly took place between 1588 and 1620, with Francesco Capriano and Carlo Maderno among the architects. This work replaced a previous church, most probably built in the 5th century. The facade is mostly in brick with details in white travertine. The bell towers are placed over the external chapels on either side of the church aisles.

The first church on the site of San Salvatore in Lauro was built in the 12th century. It was rebuilt around 1450, destroyed in a fire in 1591 and rebuilt again in 1594. The interior was only completed in 1734 and the facade was added in 1857-62 to designs by Camillo Guglielmetti. It is the national church in Rome for inhabitants of the Marche region in Italy.

Golden Square

The area where Golden Square was built was previously called Windmill Fields, after a windmill erected sometime around 1585. It had been granted as a freehold since 1559-60 after the crown took possession in 1536 from the Mercer’s Company.

The part of Windmill Fields were the square was built was called Gelding Close, because it was used as a pasture for castrated horses, known as Geldings. The name Golden Square, in use by the late 17th-century, seems to have derived from Gelding.  

By 1670, the land was primed for development. Rival claims of ownership were settled and the land ended up in the hands of John Emlyn and James Axtell.

In 1670-71, Christopher Wren reported in his capacity as Surveyor General on unlicensed houses in places such as Windmill Fields, resulting in a proclamation against the practice. In response, Emlin and Axtell made an official petition.    

A grant was given in 1673 according to a plan bearing Wren’s signature. It not clear where it originated and may merely have been approved by the Surveyor General, not necessarily authored by him.

No building took place there for some time, and a final settlement between the two owners had only been reached in 1675. In the process, John Emlyn’s share fell to Isaac Symball. Some of Symball’s plots were under construction before 1680 but proceeded slowly. Meanwhile, Axtell died in 1679 and the development of his plots only got underway after a few years into the next decade.   

The western range was completed by 1689 as was most of the southern, though two of the houses were only completed in 1692. The eastern range was first completed by the turn of the century and the houses on the northern range were built in 1685-98. The facades were relatively uniform but less so than in Soho Square. The earliest buildings in particular tended to diverge in style and height, while the later were more more coordinated.  

Most of the houses were three storeys high and three windows wide, in brick with sash windows under flat gauged arches. The dormer windows had triangular pediments and most of the door-cases had scrolled broken pediments.

 

The western range was built in the early 20th century. The red brick buildings are almost all by the same architect, William Woodward. First out was 17 Golden Square, built for Burberry in 1902. The adjoining 18 Golden Square was built in 1904 but with a a stone facade. Burberry expanded with two new buildings in 1907-08, and 15-16 Golden Square are presumably both designed by Woodward. Meanwhile, Woodward designed number 13 in 1906. The gap between that and the Burberry buildings were plugged with an extension in 1912-13, to a design by R. H. Kerr. Finally, 19 Golden Square was built at the other end of the range in 1922.

On the northern range, the building on the left was built in 1987. The middle building is from 1914 and was designed by Leonard Stokes for silk and wool merchants Gagnière and Co. The building on the right was completed by 1929 by architect Gordon Jeeves.

The tall and narrow building on the left is from 1915 and was built as show-rooms and offices for a Huddersfield woollen firm. The architects were Naylor and Sale. It is surrounded on both sides by older buildings. The house on the left seems to have been remodelled or rebuilt at the end of the 18th century. The same is true of the two houses on the right, though the remodelling of the original facades may have come earlier in the century. The tall building on the right was completed in 1924 to a design by Mewès and Davis for the woollen firm of Dormeuil Frères. The building on the far left is from 1886.

The brick front on the right was rebuilt in 1954 but is a reasonably faithful copy of the original, as it was rebuilt in 1778. On left we find a building from 1907–08 designed by E. Keynes Purchase. the other buildings are from 1923, 1925 and 1903-04 respectively.

Bedford Square

Bedford Square was built between 1775 and 1783.

The idea of building on the Bedford estate originated after the peace of Paris in 1763, and the Duke of Bedford initially suggested a large circus on the same lines as the one in Bath, then currently under construction. The duke, however, died in 1771 and his widow passed the project over to Robert Palmer, who may have designed the layout of streets. The design of most of the houses are attributed to Thomas Leverton.

1 Bedford Square was designed by Thomas Leverton and is distinguished from the other houses in the square by the red brick in the flat gauged arches over the windows in the first and ground floors. It also has a different doorway and is not part of the overall composition of the square.

The four sides of the square has a stuccoed front(s) in the centre. The style is very similar to Robert Adam's Portland Place, almost to the point of plagiarising. Unlike Portland Place, the original composition has been maintained, with only minor changes to some of the houses. 6 Bedford Square has been heightened a bit and many windows lack the original bars, but the fronts are otherwise remarkably well preserved. The cast iron balconies to some of the properties were added in the 19th century.

The stuccoed fronts vary in width and amount of pilasters so that the sides of the square look subtly different. The stuccoed front on the east range is five window bays wide and has four ionic pilasters; the stuccoed fronts on the north and south ranges are six window bays wide, consist of two houses and have five ionic pilasters; while the stuccoed front on the west range is three window bays wide and has four ionic pilasters. 

The doorways of the square are in Coade stone, to a design which is also found at 39 Conduit Street, 7 Devonshire Street, and many houses in Baker Street and Harley Street. Coade stone is a stone ware, which was created in 1770 by Eleanor Coade's factory in Lambeth. Coade stone was a successful product in the late 18th-century building industry, and the fact that the design was used elsewhere indicate that it was not made specifically for Bedford Square. This also explains why no architect was hired to design the square. Instead, Thomas Leverton seems to have combined a few existing motifs to create the facades of the houses. Thomas Leverton took a building lease at 13 Bedford Square in 1775.

The Coade stone design for the doorway consists of vermiculated intermittent voussoirs and bands with a mask keystone. The door has side lights on both sides and fanlights, mostly radial patterned, above.

The Architecture of the Louvre

The building of the Louvre Palace is one of the longest and most complex in the history of European architecture. The Louvre was originally a fortress built in the 12th century, which later became a royal residence and was expanded and embellished over the next two centuries.  

The transformation into a renaissance palace began during the reign of Francis I, who in 1527 had ordered the demolition of the round keep within the square quadrangle. It took another twenty years, however, before the king returned his attention to the Louvre and hired Pierre Lescot to replace the medieval building.

The first section of the new courtyard palace was built in 1547-51, by which time the crown passed to Henry II. The courtyard has since quadrupled in size and several of the facades have been altered, but the original Lescot wing has survived mostly intact. The relief work is mostly attributed to Jean Goujon, though the statues in the niches are from the 19th century.

Lescot clearly modelled his facade on the courtyards of Italian palaces, though the result is both more ornate and complex. The projections introduce a vertical element to the composition, which is absent in most Italian examples. Arranging the facade in this way would later become typical of French architecture, but doesn't seem to have been the original intention. Lescot was following the French tradition of creating a projection in the facade to accommodate the staircase. He wanted to place it in the centre but this became difficult when the king insisted on having a reception hall across the entire ground floor. The ramp of the staircase was therefore pushed to one side, but Lescot still kept the central frontispiece of the original design and introduced a third for the sake of symmetry. The idea of having a ground-floor arcade with recessed windows may have come from the project to build a new city hall, which began in 1533. The roof is the first known mansard, which would also become a staple of French classical architecture. The break in angle of the sloping roof was probably used to diminish its visual impact.

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Work began on a second wing in 1553. This was to be known as the Queens' wing and was intended primarily as living quarters for a future queen and the queen mother, who had been widowed when Henry II died in a jousting accident in 1559. Its now more commonly referred to as the Charles IX wing. The decoration had not been completed when Lescot died in 1579 and the attic floor was removed in the 19th century. Lescot also built a tower-like pavilion (Pavillon du Roi) at the corner of the two wings but this has not survived.
  

The queen mother, Catherine de Medici, ruled France to varying degrees during the reigns of her three sons: Francis II, Charles IX and Henri III. She apparently didn’t like the still half-medieval Louvre very much and chose instead to build an entirely new palace to the west, outside the city walls. Construction on the Tuileries palace began in 1564 to designs by the architect Philibert de l’Orme, while work on the Queens' wing at the Louvre came to a halt the year after and would only be completed during the reign of Henri IV.

Nevertheless, work at the Louvre did not stop completely and the idea of a long gallery to link the Louvre with the Tuileries appears to have originated during this time.

The first step in this plan was the little gallery. A little bridge-like structure, which spanned across the moat, connected it to one corner of the Louvre courtyard. The ground floor design appears to be from 1566-67, but the first floor was only completed by Henry IV and its design was probably only finalised during his reign. The original architect is not known but could have been Philibert de l’Orme or Pierre Lescot, who after all was still the architect in charge of the Louvre. The gallery was rebuilt after a fire in 1661 to a revised design by Louis le Vau but some elements of the original was restored by Felix Duban in the mid-19th century.

The little gallery was initially built as a ground-storey terrace overlooking the Louvre gardens. The use of black marble strips on the Doric pilasters suggests some influence from de l'Orme's design of the Tuileries palace, though the result is more conventional. The decoration of the frieze may also point to de l'Orme in adhering to a 'correct' formula for the Doric order, though the decoration in the spandrels of the arches has been seen as indicative of Lescot's style. The absence of pilasters in some of the bays on the ground floor is due to le Vau's rebuilding in the 17th century, while the dormers and the frontispiece is the result of 19th-century restoration.

Meanwhile, Jean Bullant took over as architect of the Tuileries when de l’Orme died in 1570. Catherine de Medici soon lost interest and work ground to a halt after 1572, though plans to expand the palace were made.

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Things really started to pick up with the end of the religious wars and the ascension of Henry IV. The Queens' wing was finally completed, the first floor of the little gallery was built in 1594-96 and the 400-metre grand gallery between the Louvre and the Tuileries was achieved by 1606.  

The job of designing the grand gallery was given to two architects, resulting in two different designs. The first section has been attributed to Louis Métezeau, who designed a two-storey building with a mezzanine between the ground and first floors.



The composition feature alternating triangular and segmental pediments, except over the main entrance, where a more elaborate frontispiece is introduced. Paired columns and a balcony also adds emphasis to this part of the facade, which has been named Porte Barbet de Jouy after a 19th-century curator.

Certain changes have been made to Métezeau's original design. The three-storey pavilion at one end, adjoining the little gallery, was built by Louis le Vau in the 17th century. A corresponding pavilion at the other end was later added for symmetry. Most of the statues and the ornament in the pediments and central frontispiece is due to a mid-19th century restoration effort.

The rest of the grand gallery was originally designed by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, but his work was demolished in the 1860s. The earlier facade consisted of colossal pilasters, which can still be seen in copy on the Rivoli wing built under Napoleon I, while the new river facade is closer to Métezeau. 

At the transition between the two different sections stood Pavillon Lesdiguières, which still exists though it is now incorporated into a wider composition, known as les Guichets du Carrousel.  The pavilion was previously named after the lantern at the top of its cone-shaped roof.

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After the assassination of Henri IV, a second Medici queen became regent and royal building works shifted to the new Luxembourg Palace. It was only after Louis XIII came of age that attention returned to the Louvre.

Work began in 1624, on a scheme that apparently originated with Henri IV: to quadruple the size of the Louvre courtyard. The north walls of the fortress were razed and a pavilion was built adjoining the Lescot wing. A new wing, which has since been named after its architect, Jacques Lemercier, was then built as a further extension.

The Clock Pavilion (Pavillon de l’horloge) is named after a clock that was later inserted into the facade. The design of the caryatids has been attributed to Jacques Sarrazin and were executed by sculptors Guérin and De Buyster.

The Lemercier wing (right) is identical to the original Lescot wing (left), except in the details of the relief work, which was mostly completed in the early 19th century. However, at least one of the motifs on the ground floor have been attributed to Gerard van Opstal and dated to 1638.    

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Louis XIII died in 1643 and his widow, Anne of Austria, moved the royal residence across the street to a palace originally built for Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu. This building is still known as the Palais Royal. Anne of Austria was forced to flee Paris due to a revolt of aristocrats, and the Fronde, as the conflict was known, was only ended in 1653. Anne of Austria subsequently moved back to the Louvre and employed a new architect named Louis le Vau.

One of his first jobs was to rebuild the little gallery after a fire in 1661, turning the first floor of that building into the Galerie d'Apollon. He also also built new sections to the north and east of the gallery; creating the vestibule Rotonde d'Apollon, Pavillon du Salon Carrée and Cour de la Reine, which is now called Cour du Sphinx.

He then turned his attention to the completion of the main courtyard. The north and south wings were both built following the same lines as the earlier work by Lescot and Lemercier. Le Vau's main contribution seems to have been the river front, which he intended as a counterpoint to his work on the Collège des Quatre-Nations on the other side of the Seine.

Work continued on the north wing and some progress was also made on the final east wing. Meanwhile, the Tuileries Palace had been expanded in 1659-61 and le Vau and his assistant François d'Orbay redesigned the facade there in 1664-66.

But the Louvre was soon to take a new direction, which would undo much of le Vau's work. He was challenged in his role as chief architect and the work was stopped. In 1665, the Italian architect and sculptor Bernini was invited to Paris and submitted designs. But in the end, the east front was designed by a committee of three members: Louis le Vau, Claude Perrault and Charles le Brun. Le Vau died in 1670 and the east facade, known as the Colonnade, is mostly attributed to Claude Perrault, though le Vau's successor François d'Orbay may also have played a significant role.

In 1964-67, the moat in front of the east front was redug and surrounded with a balustrade. It had been filled in during construction in the 17th century.

The colonnade is taller and wider than the other wings, and in 1668 work started on a completely new facade for the river front to match it, even though Le Vau had completed work here as recently as 1663. Perrault apparently also produced a design for the north wing, though this was only completed at a later stage. 

All work on the Louvre was stopped by the end of the 1670s when Louis XIV made Versailles his permanent residence. The three new wings were all left in a state of incompletion. The new riverside facade by Perrault was just a screen that had been built in front of le Vau's previous south front and the colonnade and north wings both lacked roofs. 

Not much happened in the 18th century, but the east wing's courtyard facade was restored by Jacques-Germain Soufflot and Jacques-Ange Gabriel around 1756. It was the first to use a full top storey instead of an attic. This was according to the existing design by Claude Perrault, who had apparently intended to use a new order for the columns. Just as De l'Orme had done in the 16th century at the Tuileries, he named his invention the French order. Using any of the existing orders above the composite of the first floor would have been considered incorrect, according to the rules of classical architecture. Lemercier got around this problem by using caryatids, but Perrault's French order was never used and the columns that were made are Corinthian.



Despite the intention to complete the courtyard, the project slowed due to a lack of funds. Much of the relief work was still to do, but the decoration of the central pediment seems to have been completed during this period, by sculptor Guillaume Coustou.

Some restoration work was also done to the other wings, which were finally roofed.

Some of the initial decoration on the north wing was done in 1668 by the sculptor Etienne le Hongre and his team. The architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot worked on the central passageway around a century later, but it was only in the early 19th century that Perrault's design was finally completed. The decoration of the pediment is dated to after the Bourbon restoration and was the work of a sculptor named Montpellier in 1815.

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Despite the efforts to complete the Louvre under Louis XV, the courtyard was still a bit of a mess by the time Napoleon came to power. It had been designated as a museum in 1793 and a collection had started to grow based on art works confiscated from the aristocracy and the church. The newly-elected emperor added to the collection by bringing art works back from his overseas campaigns and he chose the Tuileries as his power base.

The first order of business was to complete the courtyard, which Napoleon's architects Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine largely achieved in 1804-1810. 

Percier and Fontaine were also responsible for harmonising the facades of the courtyard. This meant that some of the attic storeys had to be removed and some of the 16th-century relief work by Jean Goujon had to be sacrificed. Some of this was used to decorate other parts of the Louvre and examples can still be found over the doors in the passageway of the east wing. 

It seems that all the corner pavilions and the central pavilion of the south wing were also removed during this period. Pavillon d'horloge was the only of Louvre's five towers to survive. 

Percier and Fontaine had also built the Arc du Carrousel in front of the Tuileries palace in 1806-08. The design is based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome and originally featured the horses of St Mark, which were returned to Venice in 1815 and replaced with a quadriga by Francois Joseph Bosio in 1828. The horses of St Mark were originally taken by the Venetians from Constantinople in 1204 and date to between the second to fourth centuries.

The name carrousel first appeared in 1662 and refers to the military drills, which were staged in front of the Tuileries palace.

From 1810, Percier and Fontaine turned their attention to the completion of the grand design, which was to unite the Louvre and the Tuileries into one super-palace. Whole residential areas between the palaces had to be cleared before work could start on a gallery along the new street of Rue de Rivoli. Construction lasted on and off until 1824 and stretched from the Tuileries to Pavillon Rohan, which was completed around 1816.

Percier and Fontaine's facade on Cour du Carrousel is a copy of Androuet du Cerceau's original design for the west section of the grande galerie. The renaissance version was later demolished, so the facades on the opposite sides of Cour du Carrousel no longer match. The decoration in the pediments were added in 1857. Work to replace Percier and Fontaine's copy was subsequently started in the 1870s but was this was never completed.

The facade on Rue de Rivoli is quite different and has a similarly austere design as the buildings on the opposite side of the street, which were also by Percier and Fontaine. The statues in the niches are all of military leaders. The first eight were installed around Pavillon de Rohan in 1854-57 and 1869. The rest followed between 1916 and 1928 and were among the last statues to be added to the Louvre's facades. Some statues were ordered as late as 1936 but were never actually used.

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Some work was carried out during the reigns of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis Philippe; but it was under Napoleon III that really ambitious plans were developed, beginning in 1852. The architect Louis Visconti worked out a plan for the completion of entire Louvre-Tuileries complex and work was continued after his death in 1853 by Hector-Martin Lefuel.

Visconti's plan was to narrow the space in front of the Louvre west front, by adding three new pavilions to flank the existing pavilion that had been built in the early 17th century. This space was named Cour Napoleon and the work was completed in 1857.



The Louvre west front had been completed by Lescot and Lemercier in the 16th and 17th centuries and was practically bare of any decoration. The original plan seems to have been to keep it in that vein, but Lefuel decided in 1856 that it needed to harmonise with the new facades of Cour Napoleon.

The pavilion was, therefore, covered in relief in 1857. The pediment features a bust of Napoleon I, in a composition by Antoine Barye and Pierre Simart. The idea of an arcade with statues of key figures in French history seems to have originated with Fontaine and Percier. Visconti had planned for the statues to go under the arches, but Lefuel modified this by having them stand on top of the arcade instead.

One of the the new pavilions can be seen on the right: Pavillon Daru. Also seen, in the corner, is the polygonal front of Galerie d'Apollon, which is the same facade le Vau had built around the time of the fire in the little gallery in 1661. A copy on the opposite side of Cour Napoleon was added by Percier and Fontaine earlier in the 19th century and is now known as the Rotonde de Beauvais.

The new facades on the north and south of Cour Napoleon both have three pavilions each. Like Lemercier's original Pavillon d'horloge, the central pavilions are domed.  On the north, Pavillon Richelieu is decorated with a pediment from 1857 by Francisque Duret, which depicts France as the protector of science and art. Its counterpart across the courtyard is Pavillon Denon.



The other pavilions have coned roofs, much like the original corner pavilions of the Cour Carrée, which were first built by Lescot in the 16th century and copied by other architects but were eventually removed. Pavillon Turgot stands at the point where Cour Napoleon widens into Place du Carrousel. Its counterpart on the other side of the courtyard is Pavillon Mollien. Opposite the previously mentioned Pavillon Daru is Pavillon Colbert.

Lefuel also added decoration to Pavillon de Rohan on the side facing Place du Carrousel. The rich decoration of the pediment depicts France seated below the imperial coat of arms, surrounded by two figures representing science and labour. The letter N and Napoleonic bees are dotted across the entire composition.



The remaining section on Rue de Rivoli includes yet another pavilion, which stands opposite the facade of the Palais-Royal, where Anne of Austria held court in the mid-17th century. It is named Pavillon de la bibliothéque. The caryatids were sculpted by Astyanax Bosio, who was a nephew of the previously mentioned Francois Joseph Bosio.

At this point, the whole complex was finished. But in 1861-69, work resumed. Pavillon de Flore was redesigned and much of the grand gallery was demolished and replaced. Lefuel also pierced the river facade with the Grands Guichets.

The Grand Guichets were built in 1866-69. It incorporates the old Pavillon Lesdiguières (right) with a copy added for symmetry, named Pavillon La Trémoille. This meant that some of the relief work that had been completed in 1855 to harmonise with Pavillon de Rohan on the opposite side of Cour du Carrousel had to be removed. The river front originally featured an equestrian bronze statue of Napoleon III. It was removed only days after the proclamation of the third republic in 1870. The current statue, from 1877, shows Apollo riding Pegasus. The statues on either side of the central arch represent the navy and the merchant navy.

Lefuel created a new facade on Cour du Carrousel in 1861-66. It consists of an attic floor, which clearly draws inspiration from the Lescot wing. The relief work explores similar mythological themes as Jean Goujon in the 16th century and the motif of Diana flanked by two dogs also shows up again. The lower parts of the facade are similar in style to the east section of the grand gallery by Louis Metezeau. The Flore wing has two entrances flanked with bronze sculptures of lions by Auguste Cain, from 1867. 

On the far left is a kind of turret, which marks the transition to Pavillon des Etats, which was built during the same period but is closer in style to Cour Napoleon.   

The Tuileries was damaged in a fire during the commune in 1871 and was later demolished. This led to the rebuilding of Pavillon Marsan and the Marsan wing in 1875-79. Lefuel proceeded to rebuild in the same style as Pavillon de Flore and the Flore wing on the opposite side of Cour du Carrousel.

Lefuel would presumably have continued and built something similar to Pavillon des Etats. Instead, the facade ends abruptly at a juncture with the narrower Rohan wing, which still features Percier and Fontaine's copy of Androuet de Cerceau.