Louvre Inverted Pyramid

The inverted pyramid is part of the Grand Louvre, the museum's modernisation project for which I. M. Pei was named architect in July 1983. It belongs to the second phase, which turned the Richelieu Wing into exhibition galleries and created the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground complex of shops and restaurants; this phase opened to the public on 18 November 1993, two hundred years after the Louvre's official opening as a museum.

Pei's firm lists the inverted pyramid among the works it designed and executed for this second phase. The engineers of RFR, who had already advised Pei on the great Pyramid of the Cour Napoléon, state that they conceived, designed and engineered it; it was completed in 1992.

Pointing downwards, the pyramid is made of 84 glass rhombuses and 28 glass triangles. Its glass is low-iron and its edges are chamfered at 45 degrees, so that the light is refracted into colours across the interior stone surfaces; its engineers describe it as a large chandelier lit by daylight.

It brings light into the centre of the Carrousel du Louvre and forms another focal point in the enlarged Louvre, below the courtyard.

The pyramid can be seen from the Carrousel du Louvre galleries, in front of the museum entrance; at ground level, its glazing is hidden among the plantings of the large roundabout that separates the Cour Napoléon from the Carrousel garden.