Paris – It is the most visited museum in the world, but the management, the staff and the visitors suit the emblematic Louvre in Paris – the house of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci – needs a serious TLC.
“We have problems with the building,” said the director of the Louvre museum, Laurence des Cars, recognized at CBS News. She said that problems are due in part to age, because the palace that houses the museum was initially built at the beginning of the 13th century.
“There are nine centuries of history, in the heart of Paris and in the heart of the history of France,” said buses.
But it is also a maintenance problem. The last major renovation of the museum was more than three decades ago, when a now iconic glass pyramid of the renowned architect Im Pei was added to serve as a main entrance.
François Mori / AP
However, when this entry was inaugurated in 1989, the architects provided approximately 4 million visitors per year. Last year, the Louvre attracted 9 million people and the officials hope to see that annual attendance increased to 12 million in the coming years.
To allow this increase, the French president Emmanuel Macron announced last month an ambitious plan at 10 years aimed at renovating and extending the museum. The plans include the establishment of a new entrance on the east side of the building, to help manage the flow of visitors.
It will become the main entrance, because the pyramid is simply too small to deal with the current number of visitors, not to mention the planned increase. The access point is small, the space below is limited, and in summer, it becomes very hot in all the glass. The Louvre pyramid will however continue to be an access point to visitors.
The new entry will open on the eastern courtyard of the museum, the square courtyard, and the plan is to develop downwards, by building new galleries below. One of these galleries has been reserved as a new house for the most famous room in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa.
If you ask people to queue outside the museum, what they are looking forward to, the vast majority will answer “La Mona Lisa”.
Carlos de San Diego did not even hesitate: “I have always wanted to see him since I was little,” he told CBS News. “I am a big fan and this is one of the things that I look forward to.”
“You can never have enough,” said Ella, visiting Canada, who had already gone to the Louvre during several previous visits to Paris.
But once inside the room where Mona Lisa currently lives, her world look means crowds that are jostling to have a glimpse of her mysterious face. The relatively small size of the paint is often a shock for visitors, some of which are left using the zoom function on their smartphone cameras to look more closely.
Stéphane Ouzounoff / Hans Lucas / AFP / Getty
Da Vinci’s masterpiece is in the States room, the largest room in the Louvre. It also houses major works by Venetian masters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, who are often ignored. The remarkable room, the wedding party in Cana, by Veronese, fills the rear wall, facing the Mona Lisa. But visitors often pass directly after seeing it.
“It’s a kind of universal masterpiece,” said buses. “People want to spend time with her, and it’s okay. And we have to organize this. But the Louvre is filled with 1,000 Mona Lisas.”
She says that one of the objectives of the renovation is to improve the flow of visitors, so that people can find the collections they most easily want to see “and also discover the wonders of the Louvre”.
Cars think that the new main entrance will also connect the museum to the city which surrounds it in a more concrete way. “The pyramid is a wonderful and wonderful architecture,” she says. “But it’s a bit isolated in Paris, not in direct contact with the city. The eastern entrance will allow us to connect directly to the city, and we therefore think that it is a perfect balance for this extraordinary building.”
Mohamad Salahedin Abdelg Alsayed / Anadolu / Getty
The ambitious renovation will take a total of 10 years: six years for expansion and four others for vital repairs of the building and improvements to exceeded technical installations. The security system will also be updated to accommodate the ever -increasing figures that cross the doors of the museum.
The project should cost around $ 800 million. Macron promised that French taxpayers would not have to pay the bill – although public funds covered the cost of $ 10 million in investigations and initial plans.
To help pay all the work, ticket pricing will change – and visitors outside the European Union will have to pay more than next year. French and European taxes help finance public cultural institutions, so the argument is that they already pay in addition to 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,” said coaches.
The Louvre has also launched a fundraising campaign, hoping that the museum’s stature will open handbag strings in the world, so that it can continue to keep its number one place, while adapting to Times.
