THE MYSTERY OF THE LOUVRE: A PARIS MASTERPIECE

WHEN "The Da Vinci Code" opens Friday in the U.S., one of the first places moviegoers will see is the Louvre, where the story starts. Director Ron Howard was allowed to film in the museum, so moviegoers will see the real thing: architect I.M. Pei's Pyramid, the 1,450-foot Grande Galerie and the Salle des États where Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" hangs. For some viewers, scenes shot there will fly by, but lovers of the Louvre may pause between handfuls of popcorn to admire the museum in the heart of Paris that saw record-breaking numbers of visitors last year.

Since the filming there last spring, the museum has distanced itself from the movie, reflecting the French art establishment's well-known scorn for popular culture and the Louvre's weariness with the phenomenon created by "The Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown's controversial 2003 mystery about the supposed secret history of Christianity. Officials at the museum aren't publicly linking the dramatic increase in visitation — from about 6 million in 2000 to 7.5 million last year — with the novel, even though 57 million copies of the book are in print in 44 languages.

After all, the Louvre is not a movie set. It is a world-famous art gallery and museum of mankind in the surpassingly beautiful abode of French kings, like London's National Gallery, British Museum and Buckingham Palace all rolled into one. The Louvre has been standing alongside the Seine for more than 800 years, first as a medieval fortress built around 1190 by crusading king Philippe Auguste (Philip II) and then as a rambling royal palace on which a long chain of French artists and architects put their marks. The kings of France were insatiable collectors, so when the palace opened as a museum in 1793, the treasure-trove became the property of the French people.

After the French Revolution, art kept rolling in, acquired through donations, pilferage during the Napoleonic Wars, field work by French archeologists and a now-defunct law that allowed curators to bargain-shop in customs-office basements for artwork barred from exportation. The Louvre has 300,000 works of art spanning almost 9,000 years of human civilization, including 52 Rubens, 12 Rembrandts and, thanks to the connoisseurship of Francis I in the 16th century, more Da Vincis than Italy (or anyplace else). "The Louvre is the book in which we learn to reach," French painter Paul Cézanne wrote in a 1905 letter.

The museum today

NOW, there is even more to the museum, largely because of a huge project launched in 1981 by then-French President François Mitterrand. The Grand Louvre, as it is called, put a modern glass pyramid designed by American architect Pei at the center of the classically French building ensemble; doubled exhibition space by opening the northern wing, formerly occupied by the French Finance Ministry; and gave the complex a subterranean shopping mall. When the $960-million Grand Louvre was first announced, the French protested. It was too expensive and ambitious. Critics scoffed at Pei's pyramid, and journalists dubbed Mitterrand "Ramses II" for the Pharaoh whose building lust is documented in the museum's Egyptian wing. But the complaints subsided when the Grand Louvre reached completion around 2000. With a new entrance in the middle of the Cour Napoléon, the museum seemed far more user-friendly and Pei's controversial pyramid became a beloved landmark.

The staircase in the Pyramid