The Louvre shall be renovated and the ‘Mona Lisa’ can have her personal room

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday offered renovation plans for the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, which has fallen into disrepair and suffers from overcrowding. The renovations are anticipated to take practically a decade to finish and can embody a brand new entrance and a devoted room displaying the Mona Lisa. The goals: to convey the museum as much as fashionable requirements in a time of worldwide mass tourism, heightened safety necessities and local weather change.

“In an era where immediacy and forceful rhetoric hold hypnotic power over so many, speaking about the long term, about culture and art, is, I believe, one of the messages that France must convey to the world. It is also a political battle,” Macron stated in a speech he delivered from a podium beside Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. He unveiled the challenge’s identify: Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance, “Louvre New Renaissance” — a Louvre, he stated, “reimagined, restored and expanded.”

Macron introduced the creation of a brand new “grand entrance” to the Louvre, situated on its jap façade, to alleviate congestion on the iconic glass pyramid the place guests at the moment enter and exit, typically in oppressive warmth within the summertime. The design of the pyramid creates a greenhouse impact and may enlarge sound.

He additionally introduced that the Mona Lisa — one of the vital well-known of the estimated 35,000 artistic endeavors within the Louvre’s assortment — could be relocated to its personal new, independently accessible and ticketed area.

The museum has garnered consideration since a Jan. 13 letter to French Tradition Minister Rachida Dati by the Louvre’s president-director, Laurence des Automobiles, outlining problems with concern was leaked to the press. In keeping with French newspaper Le Parisien, the problems included “increasing malfunctions in severely degraded spaces,” “outdated technical equipment” and “alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks.”

French information channel BFM reported that the renovation may price as a lot as 800 million euros ($834 million).

“The proposed project is realistic and fully funded,” Macron insisted in his remarks on Tuesday. “Today, these 9 million annual visitors are a treasure, but the current conditions for circulation, access, and security do not allow for the best possible experience of this institution.”

The pyramid, inaugurated in 1989, commissioned by then-President François Mitterrand and designed by architect I.M. Pei, is “structurally outdated,” based on des Automobiles, having been designed to accommodate 4 million guests yearly. In 2024, the museum welcomed practically 9 million guests (80% of whom had been foreigners) and had 10 million earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic. The renovated Louvre will goal for 12 million guests yearly, Macron stated.

A “new grand entrance” shall be created on the Colonnade de Perrault to ease the pressure on the glass pyramid, Macron introduced. An architectural competitors shall be held, with the brand new entrance set to open by 2031.

Elaine Sciolino, creator of the forthcoming Adventures within the Louvre: The right way to Fall in Love with the World’s Best Museum, remembers seeing buckets amassing drops within the museum on wet days. She says the museum, constructed as a fortress within the twelfth century and later a sprawling palace for French kings, can be weak as a result of it lies in a flood zone on the banks of the River Seine.

She remembers the flood of 2016.

“There had to be a round-the-clock emergency evacuation of the basement and in 48 hours, all of these employees wrapped 35,000 art objects stored underneath and hauled them to higher ground,” she says. “It was the museum’s most ambitious evacuation since World War II” — when Louvre workers spirited away 1000’s of artworks forward of the Nazi invasion.

The museum’s renovation challenge, together with all associated development for the brand new entry level and galleries, shall be absolutely funded by “the museum’s own resources, ticket sales, sponsorships, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi licensing agreement, without burdening taxpayers,” Macron stated.

Entry will turn out to be dearer for guests from exterior the European Union starting in January 2026, he stated. Present all-access tickets price 22 euros ($22.94).

Artwork critic Didier Rykner believes the bold renovation plan is partly concerning the politically weakened Macron wanting one other sweeping challenge after the profitable restoration of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral, destroyed in a hearth in 2019 and reopened late final 12 months.

“I think Emmanuel Macron wants to appear as the savior of the Louvre,” Rykner says. “He just saved Notre Dame. He’s a superhero and wants to save the Louvre.”