Louvre of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof (fashioned from almost 9,000 steel tubes that form an interior web) that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre's south wing. The galleries, which the museum had initially hoped to open by 2009, represent the first major architectural intervention at the Louvre since the addition of I.M. Pei's glass pyramid in 1989. On 5 February 2015, about one hundred archaeologists, protesting against commercial private involvement to protect France's heritage, blocked Louvre's ticket desks to facilitate free access to the museum. At
Paris in the 18th century followed by a famine in the winter of 1692-1693. Dozens of large ovens were built in the courtyard of the Louvre to bake bread for the poor, but the distribution of the loaves at central points around the city resulted in fighting and riots. That winter, fourteen or fifteen people a day died of hunger at the Hôtel Dieu hospital next to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Another bad harvest and severe winter hit Paris in 1708-1709, with temperatures reaching below 20 degrees (Celsius). The Seine froze from January 26 until April 5, making it impossible to deliver grain to the