The Musée Central des Arts opened in the former royal palace of the Louvre, displaying works seized from the monarchy, the church, and fleeing aristocrats during the Revolution. It was a deliberate political statement: art once reserved for kings now belonged, in theory, to the French people.
Just months after Louis XVI's execution, the revolutionary government moved with startling speed to convert his family's ancestral palace into a public gallery. The opening exhibition displayed roughly 537 paintings, drawn largely from royal and church collections confiscated during the upheaval, alongside classical sculptures and other treasures.
The symbolism was impossible to miss. The Louvre had been a fortress, then a royal palace expanded by generations of kings including Francis I and Louis XIV before the court decamped to Versailles. Turning it into a museum open to any citizen was an assertion that culture itself had been liberated from the crown.
The collection would grow enormously under Napoleon, who filled its halls with art plundered from his military campaigns across Europe and Egypt, before much of it was returned after his defeat. Today the Louvre holds roughly 380,000 objects and remains the most visited museum on Earth, its glass pyramid entrance added two centuries later in a controversial modern addition.