Louvre museum's inverted pyramid (cropped)

The Louvre Inverted Pyramid (french: Pyramide inversée du Louvre) is a

skylight A skylight (sometimes called a rooflight) is a light-permitting structure or window, usually made of transparent or translucent glass, that forms all or part of the roof space of a building for daylighting and ventilation purposes. History Open ...

constructed in the

Carrousel du Louvre The Carrousel du Louvre is an underground shopping mall in Paris, France, managed by Unibail-Rodamco. The name refers to two nearby sites, the Louvre museum and the Place du Carrousel. The mall contains a famous skylight, ''La Pyramide Inversée'' ...

, an underground

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that ...

in front of the

Louvre Museum The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. It may be thought of as a smaller sibling of the more famous

Louvre Pyramid The Louvre Pyramid (Pyramide du Louvre) is a large glass and metal structure designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei. The pyramid is in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace in Paris, surrounded by three smalle ...

proper, yet turned upside down: its upturned base is easily seen from outside.

Design

The inverted

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

marks the intersection of two main underground walkways beneath the

Place du Carrousel The Place du Carrousel () is a public square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre Palace, a space occupied, prior to 1883, by the Tuileries Palace. Sitting directly between the museum and the Tu ...

and orients visitors towards the museum entrance under the

Cour Napoléon The expansion of the Louvre under Napoleon III in the 1850s, known at the time and until the 1980s as the Nouveau Louvre or Louvre de Napoléon III, was an iconic project of the Second French Empire and a centerpiece of its ambitious transforma ...

. Tensioned against a , square steel caisson frame, the inverted pyramidal shape in laminated glass points downward towards the floor. The glass of the pyramid itself is thick, while the glass above the pyramid at courtyard (ground) level, which must be able to support the weight of pedestrians, is thick. The tip of the pyramid is suspended above floor level. Individual glass panes in the pyramid are connected by

stainless-steel Stainless steel is an alloy of iron that is resistant to rusting and corrosion. It contains at least 11% chromium and may contain elements such as carbon, other nonmetals and metals to obtain other desired properties. Stainless steel's resis ...

crosses in length. After dark, the structure is illuminated by a

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

of spotlights. Directly below the tip of the downwards-pointing glass pyramid, a small stone pyramid (about ) is stationed on the floor, as if mirroring the larger structure above: The tips of the two pyramids almost touch. The Pyramide Inversée was designed by architect I.M. Pei, and installed as part of the Phase II government renovation of the Louvre Museum, known as the

Grand Louvre The Grand Louvre refers to the decade-long project initiated by French President François Mitterrand in 1981 of expanding and remodeling the Louvre – both the building and the museum – by moving the French Finance Ministry, which had been ...

project. It was completed in 1993. In 1995, it was a finalist in the Benedictus Awards, described by the jury as "a remarkable anti-structure ... a symbolic use of technology ... a piece of sculpture. It was meant as an object but it is an object to transmit light.""Inverted Pyramid, The Louvre"
''The Dupont Benedictus Award'', AIA/ACSA Council on Architectural Research, 1996. .

In ''The Da Vinci Code''

The Inverted Pyramid figures prominently on the concluding pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller ''

The Da Vinci Code ''The Da Vinci Code'' is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel ''Angels & Demons''. ''The Da Vinci Code'' follows symbologist Robert Lang ...

''. The protagonist of the 2003 novel, Robert Langdon, reads esoteric

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

ism into the two pyramids: The Inverted Pyramid is perceived as a

Chalice A chalice (from Latin 'mug', borrowed from Ancient Greek () 'cup') or goblet is a footed cup intended to hold a drink. In religious practice, a chalice is often used for drinking during a ceremony or may carry a certain symbolic meaning. R ...

, a feminine symbol, whereas the stone pyramid below is interpreted as a Blade, a masculine symbol: the whole structure could thus express the union of the sexes. Moreover, Brown's protagonist concludes that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid (possibly the same size as the inverted pyramid above), embedded in the floor as a secret chamber. This chamber is implied to enclose the body of

Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene (sometimes called Mary of Magdala, or simply the Magdalene or the Madeleine) was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to his crucifixion and resurre ...

. At the climax of the 2006 film adaptation, the camera elaborately moves through the entire glass pyramid from above and then descends beneath the floor below to reveal the supposed hidden chamber under the tiny stone pyramid, containing the

sarcophagus A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Gre ...

with the remains of

. In reality, the smaller stone pyramid does not form the tip of a larger pyramid. In fact, it can be pushed aside to facilitate maintenance and cleaning of the glass pyramid above.

References

External links

*
"Visitor trails: The Da Vinci Code, Between Fiction and Fact"
Louvre website
The Paris Meridian, or "Rose Line"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pyramide Inversee, La Louvre Palace Inverted pyramids Pyramids in France