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La Pyramide Inversée (The Inverted Pyramid) is a skylight constructed in an underground shopping mall in front of the Louvre Museum in France. It may be thought of as a smaller sibling of the more famous Louvre Pyramid proper, yet turned "upside down": its upturned base is easily overlooked from outside. The word skylight, when used alone, has several possible meanings in the English language. ...
For the traditional meaning of the word mall, see mall. ...
The main courtyard of the Louvre. ...
The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. ...
Design The pyramid marks the intersection of two main walkways and orients visitors towards the museum entrance. Tensioned against a 30-ton, 13.3-meter square steel caisson frame, the inverted pyramidal shape in laminated glass points downward towards the floor. The tip of the pyramid is suspended 1.4 meters (a little more than 4.5 feet) above floor level. Individual glass panes in the pyramid, 30 mm thick, are connected by stainless steel crosses 381 millimeters in length. After dark, the structure is animated by a frieze of spotlights. This is about the polyhedron. ...
A caisson is: In engineering, a retaining structure used, for example, to work on the foundations of a bridge pier. ...
In metallurgy, stainless steel is defined1 as a ferrous alloy with a minimum of 10. ...
Frieze of the Tower of the Winds. ...
Spotlight can refer to: Spotlight - a new search technology integrated into a future version of the Mac OS X operating system The Spotlight a weekly US newspaper, now out of print In theatre, a spotlight is a particular type of stage lighting which can be used to focus attention on...
Directly below the tip of the downwards-pointing glass pyramid, a small stone pyramid (about one meter/three feet high) is stationed on the floor, as if mirroring the larger structure above: The tips of the two pyramids almost touch.
La Pyramide Inversée was designed by architects I.M. Pei, Cobb Freed and Partners, and installed as part of the Phase II government renovation of the Louvre Museum. It was completed in 1993. In 1995, it was a finalist in the Benedictus Awards, described by the jury as "a remarkable anti-structure . . . a symbolic use of technology . . . a piece of sculpture. It was meant as an object but it is an object to transmit light." Ieoh Ming Pei (貝聿銘 pinyin Bèi Yùmíng) is a Chinese American architect born in Suzhou, China on April 26, 1917. ...
1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003) Events Media:January January 1 - Czechoslovakia divides. ...
1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
La Pyramide Inversée in fiction The Inverted Pyramid rose to sudden fame in 2003-2004 because it figures prominently on the concluding pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller The Da Vinci Code. The author, or rather the protagonist of his novel, reads esoteric symbolism into the two pyramids: The Inverted Pyramid is perceived as a Chalice, a feminine symbol, whereas the stone pyramid below is interpreted as a Blade, a masculine symbol: the whole structure could thus express the union of the genders. Moreover, Brown's protagonist concludes that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid (possibly the same size as the inverted pyramid above), embedded in the floor as a secret chamber. This hidden submerged pyramid is hinted to hold a sarcophagus with the remains of Mary Magdalene, plus a set of ancient documents setting out the "true" story of early Christianity: In the novel, these items are identified as the real Holy Grail, hidden away by a secret society when the new Louvre foyer was constructed in the 1980s and 1990s. 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and also: The International Year of Freshwater The European Disability Year Events January January 1 - Luíz Inácio Lula Da Silva becomes the 37th President of Brazil. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Dan Brown (born on February 22, 1964 in New Hampshire) is an American author of detective thrillers. ...
The Da Vinci Code book cover The Da Vinci Code is a novel written by American author Dan Brown and published in 2003 by Random House (ISBN 0385504209). ...
For an account of the late 19th-century movement in poetry and the arts, known as Symbolism, see symbolism (arts). ...
Russian chalice A chalice (from Latin calix, cup) is a goblet, intended to hold just drink. ...
Gender is the perceived masculinity or femininity of a person or characteristic. ...
A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. ...
Mary Magdalene, which probably means Mary of Magdala, a town on the western shore of the Lake of Tiberias, is described in the New Testament as a follower of Jesus both in the canon and in the apocrypha. ...
Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life, teachings, death by crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. ...
In Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish, plate, cup or vessel that caught Jesus blood during his crucifixion. ...
Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM...
Up close, it is quite obvious that the stone pyramid below La Pyramide Inversée is merely sitting on top of the floor and does not really extend below floor level (it was indeed so designed that it can be slid aside when the floor is being cleaned). But while Brown's story is pure fiction, his novel generated such public interest in these architectural features that the Louvre Museum had to rope off the area around the stone pyramid, evidently to prevent visitors from inflicting any damage. Architecture (in Greek αρχή = first and τέχνη = craftsmanship) is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. ...
Analysis Whatever one thinks of Dan Brown's fictionalized treatment of La Pyramide Inversée, the author can claim credit for having brought a remarkable work of architectural art to the attention of the general public. On pp. 453-54 of The Da Vinci Code, Brown lyrically describes the Inverted Pyramid "plunging into the earth like a crystal chasm...aglow with amber light" (the view from outside after dark), indeed a "breathtaking V-shaped contour of glass" (the view from below).
It should be noted, however, that the now-famous description provided in the novel is not in all respects accurate (irrespective of the claim that the stone pyramid "protrudes up through the floor" rather than simply sitting on top of the floor). On one point, Brown's description is indeed self-contradictory. He rightly describes the stone pyramid as being three feet tall and "almost touching" La Pyramide Inversée above, yet he also says that the tip of the pyramid is suspended "six feet above the floor": If so, there would necessarily be three feet between the tips of the pyramids, in which case they could hardly be described as "almost touching" one another. Actually the tip of La Pyramide Inversée is closer to the floor than six feet (rather, as noted above, 4.5 feet), so that it does indeed hover right above the tip of the three-feet stone pyramid below.
Brown is also wrong to imply that La Pyramide Inversée is visible from the entresol below the Louvre Pyramid proper (p. 22 of The Da Vinci Code). Rather, as correctly stated on p. 453, one has to leave this part of the entresol through a tunnel before one emerges in the mall where the Inverted Pyramid is suspended from the ceiling.
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