The Saint-Louis rooms

Pause beside the stonework in the Saint-Louis rooms. These spaces belong to the medieval Louvre beneath the later palace. Follow the surviving surfaces and the joins between them. You can look at their scale and texture without reconstructing every missing part. The rooms carry the name Saint-Louis, the name traditionally given to Louis IX, a thirteenth-century king of France. That name is a useful landmark in the palace’s history. It doesn’t identify who built each piece of masonry in front of you. Choose a join between two parts of the stonework and look at how they meet. Some parts survive and others have gone. Above these remains, the palace continued to grow and change. We will now leave this lower part of the building and look at a room made for royal gatherings.