French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday presented renovation plans for the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, which has fallen into disrepair and suffers from overcrowding. The renovations are expected to take nearly a decade to complete and will include a new entrance and a dedicated room displaying the Mona Lisa. The aims: to bring the museum up to modern standards in a time of international mass tourism, heightened security requirements and climate 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 said in a speech he delivered from a podium beside Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. He unveiled the project’s name: Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance, “Louvre New Renaissance” — a Louvre, he said, “reimagined, restored and expanded.”
Macron announced the creation of a new “grand entrance” to the Louvre, located on its eastern façade, to relieve congestion at the iconic glass pyramid where visitors currently enter and exit, sometimes in oppressive heat in the summertime. The design of the pyramid creates a greenhouse effect and can magnify sound.
He also announced that the Mona Lisa — one of the most famous of the estimated 35,000 works of art in the Louvre’s collection — would be relocated to its own new, independently accessible and ticketed space.
The museum has garnered attention since a Jan. 13 letter to French Culture Minister Rachida Dati by the Louvre’s president-director, Laurence des Cars, outlining issues of concern was leaked to the press. According to French newspaper Le Parisien, the issues included “increasing malfunctions in severely degraded spaces,” “outdated technical equipment” and “alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks.”
French news channel BFM reported that the renovation could cost as much 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in 1989, commissioned by then-President François Mitterrand and designed by architect I.M. Pei, is “structurally outdated,” according to des Cars, having been designed to accommodate 4 million visitors annually. In 2024, the museum welcomed nearly 9 million visitors (80% of whom were foreigners) and had 10 million before the COVID-19 pandemic. The renovated Louvre will aim for 12 million visitors every year, Macron said.
A “new grand entrance” will be created at the Colonnade de Perrault to ease the strain on the glass pyramid, Macron announced. An architectural competition will be held, with the new entrance set to open by 2031.
