Former palace of the Kings of France, the Louvre Museum presents vast and rich collections: in all, more than 38.000 works of the ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean, the arts of Islam and Western art from the Middle Ages to 1848. The most famous artworks include the Mona Lisa, the Victory of Samothrace or the Venus de Milo, but also the squatting Scribe, the Code Hammurabi, or Vermeer's Lacemaker.
Among the cultural events designed to accompany the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris is an exhibition at the Louvre on the creation of the first modern Olympic Games. Visitors will discover how the Games came into being in the late 19th century: the political context of the time, the iconographic sources on which they were based, and how the organisers set out to recreate the sporting competitions of ancient Greece.
To celebrate the historic conservation work carried out on Jan van Eyck's masterpiece - the first intervention of its kind since the painting entered the museum in 1800 - the Louvre has decided to dedicate the first spotlight exhibition to be held in the Salle de la Chapelle since 2014 to Chancellor Rolin in Prayer before the Virgin and Child, also known as the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin. The layers of oxidised varnish that had darkened the paint were stripped away, restoring the work to its former glory.
