It was once decried as an architectural "obscenity", but as the Louvre's glass pyramid turns 30 on Friday, it has become a cherished icon of the French capital.
One eminent writer called for revolt in the streets when French president Francois Mitterrand's flamboyant culture minister Jack Lang first unveiled the plans for what is now regarded as Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei's masterpiece.
Plonking a modernist pyramid into the centre of a Renaissance palace was considered sacrilege, with one satirical magazine calling it a tomb and joking that Mitterrand - who was suffering from cancer - "wants to be the first pharaoh in our history".
Pei - who will be 102 next month - remembers "receiving many angry glances in the streets", with up to 90 percent of Parisians said to be against the project at one point.
Yet in the end, even that stern critic of modernist "carbuncles", Britain's Prince Charles, pronounced it "marvellous".
Over the next few days, JR, one of the world's most famous street artists, will create a huge collage with the help of 400 volunteers to celebrate its 30th birthday by revealing "the Secret of the Grand Pyramid".
Masterstroke
The sphinx-like Mitterrand, who had embarked on a string of grand projects to transform the French capital, hedged his bets from the start.
"It's a good idea, but like all good ideas it is difficult to do," the wily old Socialist leader had warned Lang.
A whole wing of the Louvre was then occupied by the French ministry of finance, which held the purse strings of the state, and would be difficult to budge.
The museum's huge "Napoleon Courtyard was an appalling car park," Lang told AFP. "The museum was handicapped by the lack of a central entrance."
Pei's masterstroke was to link the three wings of the world's most visited museum with vast underground galleries bathed in light from his glass and steel pyramid.
Such was his success that the conservative French daily Le Figaro, which had led the campaign against his "atrocious" design for years, celebrated his genius with a supplement on the 10th anniversary of the pyramid's opening in 1999.
Pei, who grew up in Hong Kong and Shanghai, was not the obvious choice for the job, having never worked on a historic building before.
But Mitterrand was so impressed with his modernist extension to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC that he insisted he was the man for the Louvre.
Already in his mid-60s when the project began, nothing had prepared Pei for the hostility his plans would receive.
He needed all his tact and dry humour to survive a series of encounters with planning officials and historians.
'You're not in Dallas now'
One meeting with the French historic monuments commission in January 1984 ended in uproar, with Pei unable even to present his ideas.
"You are not in Dallas now!" one of the experts shouted at him during the "terrible session", where he felt the target of anti-Chinese racism.
Not even Pei's winning of the Pritzker Prize, the "Nobel of architecture" in 1983, assuaged his detractors.
Lang told AFP he is still "surprised by the violence of the opposition" to Pei's ideas.
"The pyramid is right at the centre of a monument central to the history of France (the Louvre is the former palace of the country's kings.)"
The Louvre's then director, Andre Chabaud, resigned in 1983 in protest at the "architectural risks" Pei's vision posed.
The present incumbent, however, is in no doubt that the pyramid helped turn the museum around.
Jean-Luc Martinez is all the more convinced having worked with Pei in recent years to adapt his plans to cope with the museum's growing popularity.
Pei's original design was for up to two million visitors a year. Last year the Louvre welcomed more than 10 million.
"The Louvre is the only museum in the world whose entrance is a work of art," Martinez insisted.
The pyramid is "the modern symbol of the museum", he said, "an icon on the same level" as the Louvre's most revered artworks such as the "Mona Lisa" or the "Venus de Milo".
Pei is not alone in being savaged for changing the cherished landscape of Paris.
In 1887, a group of intellectuals that included Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant published a letter in the newspaper Le Temps to protest the building of the "useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower", an "odious column of sheet metal with bolts."
Paris's Louvre museum: eight centuries of history
From a medieval fortress protecting Paris to one of the world's biggest and most-visited museums, the Louvre has been reinvented many times over the centuries.
Today it attracts 10 million visitors a year, most of them tourists drawn by star attractions such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.
On the 30th anniversary of the inauguration of I.M. Pei's landmark glass pyramid within one of its courtyards, here is a look back over some of the colourful episodes in the long life of the Louvre.
1190: watchtower
It started off as a Middle Age fortress set up by King Philippe-Auguste in 1190 as part of an enclosure to defend Paris, then several times smaller than it is today.
As part of the fortification, the moated Louvre Castle monitored entry from the river Seine just as the Tower of London did with the Thames.
The base of its "Grosse Tour", a large tower that served in part as a dungeon, still exists today.
1546: royal palace
As Paris expanded, the fortress lost its defensive role and was occasionally used as a royal residence. But when King Francis I returned after being imprisoned in Spain, he announced it would be converted into his main residence.
Celebrated French Renaissance architect Pierre Lescot designed the luxurious palace, with work starting in 1546 on its now-famous facade interspersed with columns, bas-reliefs and statues.
It became home to successive monarchs, each adding to its transformation, but lost its status as a royal residence after Louis XIV moved in 1678 to Versailles, about 20 kilometres outside of the city.
1725: arts salon
The Louvre evolved into a centre for arts, the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture taking up residence in the 1690s.
In 1725 the academy exhibited its members' work for the first time in its Salon Carre (Square Salon). Such "salons" or shows became major events in the arts world.
A handful of artists worked and lived in the Louvre during this time, including Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin and Rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard, but they were driven out as the space was reclaimed for a museum.
1793: museum
Soon after the start in 1789 of the French Revolution that overthrew the monarch, the governing Assembly decided the Louvre should be turned into a museum and its royal collections displayed to the public.
The National Museum opened in 1793. Napoleon I played a key role in its formation, remodelling the space and increasing its collection with acquisitions from his various conquests. He married Marie-Louise of Austria in the Louvre in 1810.
After a first presentation of just over 700 paintings and objects, the Louvre today exhibits about 35,000 pieces from a collection nearly 20 times larger.
1830: artists stand guard
During the three-day 1830 July Revolution that overthrew another king, artists acted as national guardsmen to watch over the Louvre's masterworks and stop looting.
Eugene Delacroix kept an eye on Egyptian antiquities; Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres safeguarded works by Raphael.
Both men are today proud features of the Louvre's collection, which includes Delacroix's most famous painting "Liberty Leading the People", inspired by those "Three Glorious Days".
1911: Mona Lisa missing
In 1911 the number of visitors to the Louvre reached a new peak with crowds flocking to see the empty space where Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" used to hang.
The painting, acquired by Francois I centuries before, had been stolen.
An Italian labourer was discovered to be the thief and the work was found two years later in Florence. It was returned by special train to the Louvre, becoming its star attraction.