Inverted Pyramid in the Carrousel du Louvre

       InvertedPyramid     

This is the inverted pyramid in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall just west of the Louvre that connects with the museum. It is the kid sister of the large pyramide in the main courtyard of the museum above ground. The top (or should I say the base?) of the inverted pyramid is covered with glass to let sunlight in.

I took this photo on a Tuesday, when the museum is closed. That's why it looks so deserted. Otherwise there would be a long line of people waiting to get into the museum.

You are looking roughly east in this photograph, and behind and to the right of the inverted pyramid is the underground entrance to the Louvre Museum (with the doors closed). Since this entrance was long unknown to tourists, it used to have less of a line in front of it than did the main entrance above ground; but the tour companies and tourists have discovered it now, so it's just as crowded as the main entrance.

On the left is the main wing of the underground Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall, with many stores and shops. Further left and not visible here there are a few more shops, massive auditoriums used for seasonal fashion shows of the major couturiers, a cavernous tour-bus garage, and the remains of the old Louvre which were found during excavation for the shopping center and were turned into exhibitions of their own.

In my other photographs of the courtyard of the Louvre taken from the surface, this pyramid is located among the bushes in the median around which traffic flows in the small street that crosses the courtyard and separates it from the Tuileries Gardens. It’s hard to see from above.

Incidentally, the tiny stone pyramid at the base of this glass inverted pyramid is the pyramid mentioned by Dan Brown at the end of his novel, The Da Vinci Code. He implies that it's only the top of a much larger pyramid holding something very important, but in fact what you see here is all there is to it; if you look closely, you can see that the bottom of the pyramid is just resting on the floor—it doesn't extend beneath it. Dan made a lot of mistakes in his descriptions of Paris, so beware.

Photographed on February 27, 2024.