France’s Macron announces renovation to expand capacity of Louvre museum

PARIS — France will launch a six-year renovation of the Louvre in Paris, enlarging the world’s most-visited museum to make room for the huge crowds who now cram inside the palace on the banks of the Seine, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday. A new entrance will make it easier to get in and out, and a dedicated space with a separate entrance will house the art museum’s prize attraction, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Macron said during a visit to the museum. Starting next year, the museum will also charge a higher entry fee for visitors from outside the European Union, he said.

Louvre President Laurence des Cars warned last week that the centuries-old building – once a lavish palace for French kings – was in a dire state, w ith leaks and temperature swings t hat could endanger the conservation of works of art. A visit has become “a physical ordeal”, with artwork hard to find in a confusing layout and too little space for visitors to take a break, eat or use the toilet, des Cars said. The Louvre now receives 9 million visitors a year, more than double the 4 million it was designed to handle when it was modernised in the 1980s.



The renovation will increase capacity to 12 million, Macron said. He did not say how much the renovation would cost but said it would be financed through the Louvre’s own funds, ticket sales, sponsorships and earnings from its sister museum in Abu Dhabi, and thus “will not weigh on the taxpayer”. Big civic projects in the capital have traditionally been a way for French presidents to burnish their legacies.

Last month, Macron reopened Notre-Dame cathedral, meticulously restored five years after it was damaged by fire. “While Notre Dame was the architectural catalyst of our craftsmanship, this project for the Louvre must be for art, art history and its transmission a new step in the life of the nation,” Macron said. —Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Geert De ClercqEditing by Benoit Van Overstraeten, Peter Graff.