Islamic culture: Islam in Paris "YOU have to greet your visitor with pleasure," says Sophie Makariou, head of the Louvre's Department of Islamic Art and curator of the new galleries created to display it. What a delightful idea - and one that has been realised brilliantly. The 3,000 square-metre (32,000 square-feet) space, presenting 2,700 objects on two levels, is the first big addition to the museum since its 1989 pyramid. The visitor enters an immense, free-standing, glass box set inside the Visconti courtyard (so named for one of its architects). The stone walls and elaborately embellished windows of the old building provide a European backdrop to the Islamic works of metal and blown glass, ceramics, ivory and wood. Thus Western and Islamic cultures are interacting even before a word of wall text has been read. The gallery roof is a coup de thé â tre. Pale yellow, it resembles a colossal slice of honeycomb. The roof swoops across the open-plan gallery seemingly without supports. In some places it dips almost to the floor; elsewhere it soars. Sunlight transforms the honeycomb into a diamond-studded veil. It is a triumph for the architects, Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti. Henri Loyrette, who has been the Louvre's director since 2001, was determined to establish a department of Islamic art and create sufficient space to show it. Most of the Louvre's holdings and virtually all the Museum of Decorative Arts's 3,500 Islamic works had been in storage. Selections from this aggregation of some 20,000 objects are now on display. The director's further ambition, which he shares with Ms Makariou, is to use the collections to introduce visitors to the diversity and breadth of 1,300 years of Islamic culture. Substitute Western for Islamic and it becomes obvious that this is an impossible goal. Yet there is virtue in the attempt. Besides the exhilarating architecture, there are many delights and surprises to be seen and a good deal can be learned. To help with the learning, the material is arranged broadly chronologically, in four segments. The 7th to 11th centuries (the creation of empire); the 11th to mid-13th centuries (threat, division and conquest); the mid-13th to early-16th centuries (definition of frontiers) and the 16th to late-18th centuries (the Moghul, Safavid and Ottoman empires). The first two segments occupy the transparent courtyard-level gallery; the later periods are below. Linked to them are three listening posts: the first, a recitation of an 8th-century Arabic poem written in Spain; the second, a Persian recitation of part of Ferdowsi's acclaimed Shahnameh; and third, a Turkish reading of the Eulogy to Suleiman the Magnificent. The point is made vividly but lightly; cultural diversity exists in more than one artistic mode. The highlight of the courtyard-level gallery is a three-metre-high, free-standing mosaic wall (a detail is shown here). The red, blue, white, brown and gold tessera (tiny ceramic tiles) portray arches and pavilions, houses and trees, waves and streams. The images have the elongated élan typical of Art Deco but were created in the 9th century for the Great Mosque in Damascus. Reading the label it turns out that these are not the actual mosaics but are precise, truly trompe l'oeil, copies in watercolour and gold paint. They were made in 1929 soon after the mosaics, thought lost, were discovered under layers of plaster on the mosque's walls. They remain in Syria. Descending the stairs to the subterranean gallery the visitor looks out over a sea of glass cases. In the middle, carpets are spread on a platform. This manner of display is not a success. The line-up of so many objects encased in glass results in a boring homogeneity. Seeing the carpets laid flat somehow flattens their beauty. By contrast, the room hung with carpets in the New York Metropolitan Museum's recently opened Islamic galleries pulsates with rich colours. There are too few paintings (only 12 miniatures) and almost no textiles - and those there are have been placed behind the staircase and are easily missed. "I want people to be seduced," says Ms Makariou. Changes are being made following the opening of the galleries last week. One such will be to improve access to the paintings. Textiles will be added from a great Lyon museum collection. But, even now, there are many objects in the lower gallery to seduce the eye. A 12-metre-long wall of colourful 16th-century Ottoman tiles with their languid purple tulips and perky orange carnations is dazzling. A standout treasure is the engraved, curved-lipped, bronze basin 50cm (20 inches) in diameter and 23cm high. The basin, inset with gold, silver and black, is a rare Mamluk portrayal of animals and figures. Made in Syria or Egypt in the 14th century it came to be used at the christening of the royal infants of France, among them the future Louis XIII. It alone is testimony to the many connections between Western and Islamic cultures. Visit the Louvre's new galleries and find many more.