French President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled an ambitious 800 million euro renovation plan for the Louvre Museum, aimed at addressing severe overcrowding and infrastructure problems that have pushed the world's most visited museum to its breaking point. The project, dubbed "Nouvelle Renaissance du Louvre" (New Renaissance of the Louvre), promises to transform how millions of visitors experience art's most famous masterpiece and the museum that houses it.
There are certain places where you can encounter the globalized world population, at least its privileged segment, in concentrated form: St. Mark's Square in Venice, Times Square in New York, Taylor Swift concerts last year and Oasis concerts this year. Origin and skin color don't matter - everyone looks similar, wears the same sportswear, treats each other with the same respect. It makes you wonder why there are still wars.
Yet sharing a single, not even very large room with the entire world community is only possible in Paris - in Room 711 of the Louvre. Like its neighboring halls dedicated to "Italian Painting," it's hung with artworks in an almost pedantic manner. Pedantic, because hardly anyone pays attention to the Titians and Tintorettos in this room - all eyes focus on Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." People crowd before it like a secular shrine, as if expecting a spiritual experience, a moment of transcendence, some kind of insight. The fact that this hope is usually disappointed by the sheer number of others harboring the same expectation, leaving most with only a crooked smartphone photo, doesn't dampen the good mood.
"La Joconde," as she's called in French, has long been the Louvre's greatest attraction. Even a few years ago, you could still view the painting in relative peace. Today, however, you laboriously push through the entire length of the hall to reach the front, only to be urged to move on once you arrive: "Keep moving, keep moving." Like security staff at a hip-hop concert, a dozen museum guards stand in the moat between the barrier tape and the painting, which is additionally protected by wide railings, a massive wooden barrier, and naturally a meter-high glass plate. Occasionally, the helpers lift the tape to free elderly visitors, children, or people with disabilities who get stuck in the crowd. "We have everything here: fistfights, fainting spells..." recounts one guard.
The more burning tourists' desire to get close to the "Mona Lisa" has become, the more impossible it is to satisfy. The museum hasn't found a way to handle this yet. It seems like a ship threatening to capsize because everyone runs to one side. But this is supposed to change now.
In January, a leaked letter from Louvre President Laurence des Cars to the French Ministry of Culture painted a grim picture of the museum's condition. Her main complaint concerned overcrowding, particularly in the Salle des États where the Mona Lisa hangs. But des Cars, who has served as the first female Louvre director since 2021, also listed numerous other deficiencies. Rain leaks into the galleries, elevators and toilets need repairs. The building has reached an "alarming degree of deterioration." Employee dissatisfaction, especially among guards, is also growing. There have been wildcat strikes forcing the museum to close.
Just days after des Cars' dramatic diagnosis became public, she presented a rescue plan alongside President Macron, standing directly in front of the "Mona Lisa." Macron envisions nothing less than a "Nouvelle Renaissance du Louvre." This re-rebirth is intended to become his second grand projet after the Notre Dame reconstruction, costing 800 million euros. The architectural competition will be decided in early 2026, with the inauguration planned for 2031 - which he calls "realistic." While nine million people currently visit the world's most visited museum annually, twelve million are expected after the renovation. That would be three times as many as all Berlin museums combined.
It's just before nine on a Tuesday morning, and the line in front of the glass pyramid in the Louvre courtyard is already a hundred meters long. This won't change until afternoon, despite everyone already having tickets. Since daily visitor numbers were capped at 30,000, the museum can only be visited with pre-reserved time slots. You often wait a week for the next available slots. "It used to be crowded in summer, at Easter and Pentecost. Now we're almost always sold out. Somewhere in the world, it's always vacation time," explains the man at the entrance.
The people enduring the shadeless courtyard take half an hour to reunite at the foot of the escalator under the pyramid, where it's even brighter and hotter. The massive space resembles an airport. Here you find shops and cafés. Three staircases lead not to gates but to the three building wings with their 400 public halls arranged along 15 kilometers of corridors. Many halls see only a few visitors. You can delve into Napoleon III's chambers or Northern European painting on the second floor relatively undisturbed. But almost everyone wants to visit the one hall with the "Mona Lisa."
Since the "Da Vinci Code," Instagram, "Emily in Paris," and the Olympics, the museum has been constantly packed. Leonardo da Vinci's painting only became world-famous after it was stolen in 1911 by an Italian nationalist and museum craftsman and taken to Florence. This guerrilla restitution put the "Mona Lisa" on front pages and brought people to the museum. It became - without anyone really understanding why - the world's most famous artwork. Not only admired by millions but repeatedly attacked: with a razor blade, a stone, a teacup, with cake and soup. Each attack has renewed the "Mona Lisa" myth.
Nothing has fueled this myth like Dan Brown's 2003 bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" and its film adaptation starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. The thriller, packed with religious-historical hocus-pocus, begins with a curator's murder in the Grande Galerie and a secret message on the "Mona Lisa's" glass. The Netflix hit "Emily in Paris" and last year's Olympics mobilized worldwide interest even further.
Construction is always happening somewhere in the Louvre. The Islamic art department was added in 2012, Byzantine art in 2022. But the last major project was "Le Grand Louvre," initiated in 1981 by then-President Mitterrand and completed only in 1999. Its most visible legacy is I.M. Pei's pyramid. Since opening in 1989, it has undergone an interesting transformation: first condemned as sacrilege against national architectural heritage, then celebrated as a symbol of a Paris that constantly reinvents itself despite its history. Since climate change, it's seen as an anachronistic greenhouse whose heat dome air conditioning systems fight all summer long. But nothing about the "Grand Louvre" is as outdated as the four million visitor capacity the project was designed for.
Visitors don't immediately notice the building's dilapidation - quite the opposite. Many German museums appear more old-fashioned and in need of renovation. However, the five million additional annual visitors since the 1980s planning are unmistakable. Honeymooning couples block the staircase in front of the Nike of Samothrace, another Louvre highlight. Tour groups and guides clog the Grande Galerie. Visitors with low blood sugar line up for Coke in front of Delacroix masterpieces. Families munch breakfast-buttered baguettes while sitting on the floor under "No Food and Drink" signs. There's an entire army of employees assigned not to guard art but for crowd control. "Louvre Evacuation" reads on their orange vests. But they've given up intervening over such minor violations. They prefer positioning themselves at truly critical points, helping left and right with impressive friendliness (could German museum guards learn something there?), staying ready for when fire alarms trigger and they must evacuate the building.
This often genuinely precarious situation should end in six years. Then people will enter the museum not only through the pyramid but also through a new entrance at the eastern end - Macron's project's central idea. The 17th-century "Perrault Colonnade" represents a highlight of French Classicism and inspired both the U.S. Capitol in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Yet it stands little noticed above an empty square where tourist buses often park. The new entrance, as Macron enthusiastically explained, should help better open the strangely isolated Louvre to the city: to the Seine, Île de la Cité, La Samaritaine department store, and private museums like the Fondation Pinault and Fondation Cartier, opening this fall.
The second idea involves building the "Mona Lisa" a new, dedicated hall. This would relieve the Grande Galerie, clear the view in the Salle des États for other significant paintings, and finally allow presentation of the Joconde's history and context. Against complaints that this would mean the Louvre bowing to overtourism pressure, pandering to visitors interested not in art but Instagram motives, des Cars vehemently objects in interviews. "You must respect the public's wishes," she says. "If they appropriate a work through selfies, you must accept that. We're here to provide keys to understanding, not to judge our visitors. We don't visit the Louvre today with our parents' and grandparents' sensibilities." The new Louvre will be "more open, more human, more generous, more accessible."
Money should flow as smoothly as future tourist streams through the Louvre. According to Macron, his project will practically finance itself. Of the 800 million euros, the cash-strapped French state should contribute only 60 million. The rest should come from monetizing the Louvre myth, especially the "Mona Lisa's." Licensing fees from Abu Dhabi's Louvre branch provide a large portion. Three million additional visitors contribute another part. Non-EU citizens will pay more for tickets. Future "Mona Lisa" viewing will require a separate ticket. The museum also relies on American-style fundraising with expensive galas and VIP events.
Some critics consider the pricing policy undemocratic and the renovation plan cynical and elitist - an "act of snobbism," as The Guardian wrote. Macron and des Cars allegedly want to direct "idiots" only interested in selfies to the new "Mona Lisa" oasis, so serious visitors can finally return to art study in the museum. Yet crowds don't ruin the Louvre but make it vibrant, they argue.
Other critics denounce "vandalism against cultural heritage" threatening the Louvre through the new entrance. Many suspect Macron needs a beautiful new project to secure his place in the pantheon of French presidents who immortalized themselves with bold Parisian projects - and to distract from domestic political problems. Many doubt his financing idea will work. Perhaps most decisively, a guard standing in a quiet corner near Egyptian sarcophagi: "This woman," he says about his boss des Cars, "and the president, they live in their own crazy world while people on the street can't afford food after the 10th of the month."
Macron tries appealing to these critics too. He acknowledged their difficult work, reminded that "our Louvre" is a "republican project" we must preserve. Yet he repeatedly returned to a different argument. The museum belongs not only to the "national narrative" but as an expression "of our value system and the order we've built," it's also "part of our message to the world." It's an instrument in a "political struggle." Through the Louvre, France shows that a world is possible "where cultures are respected... a world that finds its way out of brutality to discover the spirit of civilization." The Louvre is needed "for the battles we fight and will have to fight."
The museum as a weapon in the world war of systems and narratives? Even stripping away Macron's typical pathos, this thought jarringly pulls you from the exhausting yet euphoric togetherness one can experience in the Louvre.
