Le Musée, Une Histoire Mondiale I : Du Trésor Au Musée

From the accumulation of Egyptian or Chinese tombs and royal treasures to the Louvre of today, among other places, it has taken time for the museum to find its form and function of conservation, study and exhibition of objects. A global history of museums, at once political, social and cultural, has never before been written.

This first of three volumes of this monumental study starts from a distant past and arrives at the creation of the institution called "museum", invented in Italy at the end of the 15th century and spreading throughout Europe in the 18th century. A history made up of gifts and goods, theft and plunder, wars and diplomacy. And also of architecture, of the way of contemplating and handling objects, of legal and organisational problems, before the vast debates on exhibition, lighting and hanging that were to follow.