Louis XIV practically had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles, shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their time in the more ample country-house behind the Meudon hills.
By 1750 the Louvre had become little more than an immense ruin, humbled and desecrated; a veritable orphan. The Marquis de Marigny, Surintendant des Batiments Royaux, obtained the authorization to chase out the parasites and clean up the Augean stable and put things in order as best pleased his esthetic fancy, but only with the early years of the nineteenth century did the Louvre become a real palace again and worthy of its traditions.
From 1803 to 1813 the architects Fontaine and Percier were constantly engaged in the work of repairs and additions, and built (for Napoleon I) the gallery which extends from what is now the Place Jeanne d'Arc to the Pavillon de Rohan, along the Rue de Rivoli. This detached portion (bound only to the Tuileries) was finally joined to the seventeenth century work of Lemercier under Louis Napoleon in 1852. This gallery, the work of "moderns," is no mean example of palace-building, either. It was the work of Visconti and Lefuel, and with the adoption of this plan was finally accomplished the interpolation of that range of pavilions which gives the architecture of the Louvre one of its principal distinctions. Named after the principal ministers of former administrations--Donon, Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated façades.
The inauguration of this last built portion of the palace was held on August 14, 1857, the occasion being celebrated by a banquet given by Napoleon III to all the architects, artists and labourers who had been engaged upon the work. In the same Salle, two years later, which took the name of Salle des États, the emperor gave a _diner de gala_ to the generals returning from the Italian campaign.