Paris – It is the most visited museum in the world, but the administration, staff and visitors agree on the iconic Louvre in Paris – home Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – You need a serious tlc.
“We have problems with the building,” the director of the Louvres des Museum, Laurence des acknowledged CBS News. She said the questions were partly due to the age, because the palace where the museum is located was initially built in the early 13th century.
“It is nine centuries of history, in the heart of Paris and in the heart of the history of France,” Des Cars said.
But it is also a matter of maintenance. The last major renovation of the museum was more than three decades ago, when the famous Pei architect, now an iconic glass pyramid, was added to serve as the main entrance.
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When that entrance was inaugurated in 1989, architects planned for about 4 million visitors a year. Last year, Louvre attracted 9 million people, and officials hope that the annual fall to 12 million in the years that are upcoming.
In order to enable this increase, French President Emmanuel Macron announced last month with an ambitious 10 -year plan for the renovation and expansion of the museum. The plans include establishing a new entrance to the east side of the building to help manage the flow of visitors.
This will become the main entrance, because the pyramid is simply too small to cope with the current number of visitors, let alone the expected increase. The access point is small, the space below it is limited, and in the summer it becomes very hot under the whole glass. However, the Louvre Pyramid will continue to be the access point of the visitors.
The new entrance will open at the eastern yard of the museum, Cour Carrée, and the plan is to spread downwards, building new galleries below it. One of these galleries is intended as a new home for the most famous piece of Louvre, Mona Lisa.
If you ask people who are in line in front of the museum, the most rejoicing, the vast majority will answer “Mona Lisa”.
Carlos from San Diego did not even hesitate: “I’ve always wanted to see him, since I was little,” he told CBS News. “I’m a big fan and this is one of the things I’m looking forward to.”
“You can never get it enough,” Ella said, visited from Canada, which was already in Louvre in several previous visits to Paris.
But once in a room where Mona Lisa lives, her global attraction means crowds to see her mysterious face. A relatively small size of the paintings often comes as a shock for visitors, some of which others using the function of zoom on their smartphone cameras to look more closely.
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That Vinci’s masterpiece is located in Salle DES états, the largest room in Louvre. It is also the home of the main works of Venetian Masters Titian, Tintoretta and Veronese, which are often neglected. An exceptional piece, a wedding feast in Kani, Verones, fills the back wall facing Mona Lisa. But visitors often pass straight beside him without seeing him.
“She’s a kind of universal masterpiece,” Des Cars says. “People want to spend time with her, and that’s fine. We have to organize it too. But Louvre is filled with 1,000 Mona Lisas.”
He says one of the goals of renovation is to improve the flow of visitors so people can find collections that most want to see the easier, “and also discover the miracles of Louvre.”
Des Cars believes that the new main entrance will also connect the museum to the city around it in a more specific way. “The pyramid is a beautiful, wonderful piece of architecture,” she says. “But it is a little isolated in Paris, not in direct contact with the City. The eastern entrance will allow us to connect directly to the city, so we think it is a perfect balance for this extraordinary building.”
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The ambitious renovation will take a total of 10 years: six years to expand and four more for the vital repairs of the building and upgrading of outdated technical installations. The security system will also be updated to adapt to increasing numbers that pass through the Museum’s door.
The project is expected to cost around $ 800 million. Macron has promised that French taxpayers will not have to file an account – although state funds will cover the costs of $ 10 million of initial research and plans.
To pay all the work, ticket prices will change – and visitors outside the European Union will have to pay more than next year. French and European taxes help the financing of public cultural institutions, so it is an argument that they are already paying at the top of the entrance ticket, unlike visitors from further away.
“It is not to discourage international tourism or punish anyone, but it is the reality of the economy,” Des Cars said.
Louvre has also launched a funds drive, hoping that the museum stature will open the wires of the handbags around the world, so that it can continue to stay in its place number one while adjusting to the Times.
