"A western entrance to the Louvre must be studied and not censored in the name of a hypothetical reconstruction of the Tuileries Palace."

S ince the destruction of the ruins of the Tuileries Palace by the ^Third Republic in 1883, the Louvre Museum has benefited from a unique opening along the historic axis that runs from the Tuileries to the Arc de Triomphe, passing through the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées. This void, long perceived as a wound, is today an opportunity. It offers a harmonious transition between the garden, heritage, and light. It creates a visual and symbolic breath of fresh air. It invites us to consider another way of entering the Louvre: not by compressing the crowds under the pyramid, nor by a side service entrance, but by a majestic and fluid welcome, along the great republican axis. For one thing is clear: the Louvre also looks west. Yet this evidence seems to have been struck by amnesia.

On June 27, an international architectural competition was launched to reconfigure its access points. The program, as announced, provides for the creation of a new monumental entrance to the east of the palace, under the Perrault colonnade, not far from the Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois church. However, this choice raises numerous objections, from a heritage, symbolic, urban and practical perspective.

For why is the western option not being considered in the competition? Why so much secrecy surrounding such a suitable space? Why this rejection? Faced with these questions, an embarrassing but credible hypothesis arises: the west of the Louvre is today locked away by an architectural taboo, that of a possible – even fantasized – return of the Tuileries Palace.

For several decades, voices have been raised calling for its reconstruction identically. They come from the National Committee for the Reconstruction of the Tuileries, created in 2002, figures such as academician Maurice Druon (1918-2009) and Alain Boumier (1937-2009, president of the Academy of the Second Empire). and traditionalist circles, nostalgic for an idealized Ancien Régime. The monarchy, imperial splendor, and the fine orders of classical architecture are invoked as arguments for reconstructing Philibert Delorme's "masterpiece." Even General de Gaulle, it is said, entrusted a study on the subject to the architect Henry Bernard (author of the Maison de la radio).

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