Louvre exhibition zooms in on history and those behind the modern Olympics

Depictions of classical Greek figures featured in a new exhibition about the history of the Olympic Games at the Louvre in Paris were key to the rebirth of the event in 1896. © Pierre René-Worms/RFI

Three months before the start of the Paris Olympics, the Louvre will add its cultural heft to the prelude with the launch on Wednesday of an exhibition glorifying the museum's role in the birth of the modern Games. It features the academics, artists and politicians whose dynamism defined the Olympics at its rebirth in 1896.

"Olympism, a Modern Creation, an Ancient Heritage" runs until 16 September in the Galerie Richelieu and gathers 120 vases, pictures, drawings, stamps and letters from the Louvre, private collections as well as the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the British Museum and the Ecole Française in Athens.