Inverted Pyramid in the Carrousel du Louvre

first      previous      next      last     

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.

You are looking northeast in this photograph, and behind and to the right of the inverted pyramid is the underground entrance to the Louvre Museum; since this entrance is almost unknown to tourists, it usually has less of a line in front of it than does the main entrance above ground. Behind the camera (and thus not visible here) is a theater of the Comédie Française and a Virgin Megastore (videocassettes, books, and CDs). On the right is the main wing of the mall, with many stores and shops. To the left and not visible here there are a few more shops, massive auditoriums used for seasonal fashion shows of the major couturiers, parking lots, 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 August 22, 1999.