Located in the heart of Paris along the banks of the Seine River lies the Louvre.

It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space,

over 615,000 items in its collection,

and in a non-pandemic year it gets 10 million annual visitors.

Yet, it wasn't always a museum, and the way it acquired its collection was unique.

Learn more about the Louvre, the world's greatest museum, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. Let me start by noting how I'm going to pronounce the name of the museum for the rest of the episode.

In French, the name would be pronounced Musi de Louvre. However, that is not how I'm going to

pronounce it for the rest of this episode. I'll be using the most

standard English pronunciation of the museum Louv. The reason for this is that this

podcast is in English and Louvra isn't how it's commonly pronounced in English.

This is the same reason I say Paris instead of Paris and France instead of France.

I know some people are pedantic about such things so I'm just putting this out there at the start.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Louvre out there at the start.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Louvre is located right in the heart of Paris and

the first Iran desmont on the right bank of the Sen.

The location of the museum was originally built as a fortification for the city of Paris.

In 119. King Philip II was on his way to the Holy Land to participate in the Third Crusade.

Prior to leaving, he ordered the construction of a defensive wall around the city of Paris.

The Louvre was built where the wall met the river.

It was a square-shaped building with defensive towers and a moat.

The primary reason for the building was to defend against invading

English forces from Normandy, and you can still see some of the original medieval

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