The Louvre Palace (French: Palais du Louvre, IPA: [palɛ dy luvʁ]), on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, is a former royal palace situated between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Its origins date back to the medieval period, and its present structure has evolved in stages since the 16th century.

According to the French historian Henri Sauval, the Louvre gets its name from a Frankish word leovar or leower, signifying a fortified place. But this is now known to be wrong; no such word exists, and Wolf derives Louvre instead from Latin Rubras meaning `red soil' (H. Wolf, Louvre, Révue internationale d’onomastique, 21 (1969), 223–234; Keith Briggs, The Domesday Book castle LVVRE, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 40 (2008), 113-118). It was the actual seat of power in France until Louis XIV moved to Versailles in 1682, bringing the government perforce with him. The Louvre remained the nominal, or formal, seat of government to the end of the Ancien Régime in 1789. Since then it has housed the celebrated Musée du Louvre as well as various government departments.