Located on the first floor landing of the Escalier Mollien, a monumental staircase of marble and bronze at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Café Mollien has been refurbished by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur who has added contrasting elements that both defy and supplement the grandeur of the historic interiors.

Adjoining the gallery that houses works such as Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty leading the people” and Théodore Géricault’s “The raft of Medusa”, and surrounded by a decorative cornucopia that includes imposing Corinthian columns, vertiginous ceilings with ornately carved caryatids and atlantes, and La Nymphe de Fontainebleau, a four by two metre bronze sculpture by 16th century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini, the 150 square metre L-shape space is surrounded by a magnificence of extraordinary proportions. Add the impressive views of I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid -which patrons can further enjoy on the café’s spacious terrace- and the Tuileries Gardens in the distance, and you get a space that defies intervention. Lehanneur’s answer? To design a statement of his own in the form of a lighting sculpture of grand proportions.