 The end of the eighteenth century saw the birth of the museum. Previously, people could see works of art only in private homes or in religious institutions, even though during this period, certain collectors began making their “cabinets of curiosities” available to the public. The British Museum had opened in 1759 and the Uffizi in 1765, but France was behind its neighbors, even if royal collections were more accessible than before. The first suggestion for creating a gallery in the unoccupied Louvre goes back to 1747 and was reiterated in 1765 in the eponymous entry in the Encyclopédie (Jaucourt 1765). The museum finally opened in 1793.