Louvre Claude Monet. The Louvre is slightly askew of the Historic Axis ("Axe historique"), a roughly eight-kilometre (five-mile) architectural line bisecting the city. It begins on the east in the Louvre courtyard and runs west along the Champs-Élysées. In 1871, the burning of the Tuileries Palace by the Paris Commune revealed that the Louvre was slightly askew of the "Axe" despite past appearances to the contrary. The Louvre can be reached by the Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre Métro or the Louvre-Rivoli stations. The Louvre has three entrances: the main entrance at the pyramid, an entrance from the Carrousel du
Paris in the 16th century Caryatids on the music platform of the ceremonial hall of the Louvre (1550-51); and the Four Seasons decorating the facade of the Musée Carnavalet (1547); Pierre Bontemps (1505-1568), who created sculptures for the tomb of Francis I and a funeral monument for Charles de Marigny (1556), now in the Louvre; and Germain Pilon (1525-1590), who made the extremely realistic funerary figures of Henry II of France and Catherine de'Medici for their tombs in the Basilica of Saint Denis, as well as the 385 grotesque masquerons which decorate the Pont Neuf. The most prominent Paris novelist of the period was François