Sully wing

Look at the palace gathered around the square courtyard. This eastern part of the Louvre is Sully, named for the chief minister of Henri IV, the French king who ruled at the turn of the seventeenth century. The name gives the wing an identity on the map; its buildings carry the work of many different periods. You can choose a visit here by thinking about time. Below the courtyard, medieval foundations reveal the defensive building that came first. On level 0, Egyptian objects organised around everyday life and beliefs share the wing with Greek art. On level 1, the Egyptian display follows change through time within rooms shaped by a nineteenth-century museum. French paintings occupy level 2. As you look at a work, give its setting a little attention too. A surviving wall, an elaborate ceiling or the proportions of a room may belong to a very different century from the object. Sully makes those overlapping lives unusually tangible: the place where you are standing is another part of the collection’s story.