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 16th century and sculptor Jean Gouchon was also responsible for the Lescot wing of the Louvre, a masterpiece of combined French and Italian Renaissance art and architecture, on the southeast side of the Cour Carrée of the Louvre (1546-1553). Inside the Louvre, they made the staircase of Henry II (1546-1553) and the Salle des Cariatides (1550). In 1564, Delorme was commissioned by Queen Catherine de Medicis to build an even more ambitious project; a new royal residence, the Tuileries Palace, near the Louvre. Most of the churches built in Paris in the 16th century are in the traditional flamboyant gothic style, though