To provide a projector that can suppress occurrence of illuminance unevenness and is excellent in display quality.

A projector comprises: a solid light source 52 for emitting linearly polarized light; a birefringent element 60 for converting the linearly polarized light emitted from the solid light source 52 to circularly polarized light or elliptically polarized light; a diffusion element 70 for diffusing light emitted from the birefringent element 60; and a polarization conversion element 93 that divides diffused light emitted from the diffusion element 70 into first polarized light polarized in a first polarization direction and second polarized light polarized in a second polarization direction, converts a polarization direction of the first polarized light to the second polarization direction and emits the first polarized light and the second polarized light.