PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday (Jan 28) that the Louvre would be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after the director of the world’s most visited museum voiced alarm about dire conditions for visitors and its collections.
Standing in front of the Mona Lisa, Macron said plans included a “special space” for Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece that would be “independently accessible compared to the rest of the museum”, with “its own access pass”.
The museum in central Paris would also have a “new grand entrance” to help ease congestion at its glass-and-metal pyramid entry point and be financed entirely using the institution’s “own resources”.
As part of the so-called “New Renaissance” project, France would over the next few months launch an “international architecture competition” and select winners by the end of the year to transform its buildings by 2031 at the latest, Macron said.
The seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 1600s, the Louvre is regularly listed as the world’s most visited museum, and houses masterpieces including the Mona Lisa and the Greek marble sculpture of Venus de Milo.
