Lescot Wing

The eastern façade was comprehensively renovated in the early 1980s and inaugurated by President François Mitterrand, together with the rest of the cleaned-up Cour Carrée, on 24 February 1986.

[2]: 71, 73  On the room's northern end, Goujon created a tribune or minstrels' gallery supported by four caryatid figures inspired by classical precedents (not directly by those of the Erechtheion in Athens, which were not known in Renaissance France, but presumably by ancient Roman copies thereof).

The room was used for multiple festivities and ceremonies, including the mourning of King Henry IV from 10 to 26 June 1610, and a ritual foot washing of thirteen paupers performed by Louis XIV on Maundy Thursday.

[4]: 11  In 1864, Hector-Martin Lefuel renovated the room for museum use, including a skylight in the ceiling, after a new salle des Etats had been created in Napoleon III's Louvre expansion.

[2]: 75  These were in turn deposed in 1938 and replaced in 1953 with Les Oiseaux, a set of paintings by Georges Braque that marked the first installation of contemporary art in the Louvre for more than half a century.

To the immediate north of these spaces is the Lescot Wing's ceremonial staircase, mostly preserved in its mid-16th-century state, known in the past as the grand degré du Roi and now as the escalier Henri II.

[9]: 11–13  Immediately to the north is the Pavillon de l'Horloge, built between 1624 and 1643 and served by that staircase and its symmetrical counterpart on the other side, known as escalier Henri IV (which is anachronistic, since it was only started in 1639 and left unfinished during the Fronde).