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.