PARIS — 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According to French newspaper Le Parisien, the issues included "increasing malfunctions in severely degraded spaces," "outdated technical equipment" and "alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks."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in 1989, commissioned by then-President François Mitterrand and designed by architect I.M. Pei, is "structurally outdated," according to des Cars, having been designed to accommodate 4 million visitors annually.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.
Elaine Sciolino, author of the forthcoming Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum, remembers seeing buckets collecting drops in the museum on rainy days. She says the museum, built as a fortress in the 12th century and later a sprawling palace for French kings, is also vulnerable because it lies in a flood zone on the banks of the River Seine.
She remembers the flood of 2016.
"There had to be a round-the-clock emergency evacuation of the basement and in 48 hours, all of these employees wrapped 35,000 art objects stored underneath and hauled them to higher ground," she says. "It was the museum's most ambitious evacuation since World War II" — when Louvre employees spirited away thousands of artworks ahead of the Nazi invasion.
The museum's renovation project, along with all related construction for the new access point and galleries, will be fully funded by "the museum's own resources, ticket sales, sponsorships, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi licensing agreement, without burdening taxpayers," Macron said.
Access will become more expensive for visitors from outside the European Union beginning in January 2026, he said. Current all-access tickets cost 22 euros ($22.94).
Art critic Didier Rykner believes the ambitious renovation plan is partly about the politically weakened Macron wanting another sweeping project after the successful restoration of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral, destroyed in a fire in 2019 and reopened late last year.
"I think Emmanuel Macron wants to appear as the savior of the Louvre," Rykner says. "He just saved Notre Dame. He's a superhero and wants to save the Louvre."
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