English: Counterscarp on the west side of the oldest existing wing of the Palais du Louvre in Paris (viewed toward the west-southwest), now an archaeological display located east of the Musée du Louvre's Napoleon Entrance Hall (beneath the Pyramid), near the entrance to the Medieval Louvre exhibit in the basement of the Sully wing. The counterscarp was part of a plan devised by the architect Louis Le Vau for an intermediary courtyard between the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace (Bezombes 1994, p. 56). Le Vau's wall is less than one meter below ground level, one and a half meters wide at the top, and extends down to a depth of seven meters (Biasini 1989, p. 69).

During the reign of Louis XIV, Le Vau expanded the Louvre to surround the Cour Carrée and in 1670 designed a ditch around the outside of the quadrangular building with scarp and counterscarp. A small stone bridge crossed the ditch between the Cour du Louvre (now the Cour Napoléon) and the Pavillon de l'Horloge. Le Vau died in 1670, and his project was thought never to have been realized, so it was a surprise when the counterscarp was discovered in March 1985, during excavations of the Cour Napoléon for the Grand Louvre. The discovery caused I. M. Pei and his architectural team to redesign more than one-third of the Cour Napoleon basement, at a time when the preliminary scheme had already been submitted. Detailed preliminary blueprints of the modified plan were submitted within six weeks of the discovery (Bezombes 1994, p. 56; Biasini 1989, p. 63 [before and after plans], p. 69 [text]).

Le Vau's counterscarp is not to be confused with the scarp and counterscarp of the moat outside the former wall of Charles V, located much further west. The scarp of Charles V's moat was discovered in 1990, during excavations for the construction of the below-ground Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall (Bezombes 1994, pp. 175–176).