President Macron outlines plans for Louvre ‘renaissance’

The Louvre Museum in Paris is to introduce a surcharge for non-EU visitors to fund an ambitious 10-year redevelopment.

The French president Emmanuel Macron announced last week that Louvre would undergo a complete overhaul to revamp its dilapidated building, improve the visitor experience and provide a new home for its most famous inhabitant, the Mona Lisa.

Macron said the plan, dubbed the “Nouvelle Renaissance”, would cost between €700-800m (around £675m) and would be funded almost entirely “by the museum’s own resources”, including ticket sales and private donations. An increased rate for visitors from non-EU countries, which has not yet been confirmed, will be introduced in 2026.

The president’s proposals came after a confidential memo from Louvre president Laurence des Cars leaked to the French press. In the letter, des Cars warned of the “proliferation of damage in museum spaces, some of which are in very poor condition”.

Des Cars said some areas of the building were no longer watertight and others were experiencing worrying temperature variations, “endangering the preservation of artworks”.

She described a poor visitor experience at the museum, including overcrowding, a lack of seating, and catering that fell “well below international standards”.

Des Cars described the museum's famous glass pyramid entrance, which was designed by Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei and opened in 1989, as noisy and “very inhospitable”, acting like a greenhouse on hot days.

In response to the leak, Macron called a press conference at the Louvre last week to announce the multi-year redevelopment. He said much of the funding would be raised via private philanthropy, the same approach that supported the €850m reconstruction of Notre Dame cathedral following the devastating fire there in 2019.

Speaking in front of the Mona Lisa, Macron said the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece would be moved to a dedicated space under the museum’s Cour Carré courtyard, which would be accessible independently from the rest of the museum and subject to a separate admission ticket.

A new visitor entrance will be created under the museum’s eastern-facing Perrault Colonnade by 2031 to address the problem of queues and overcrowding.

The redevelopment will enable the Louvre to welcome 12 million visitors per year, Macron said. The museum is the most-visited cultural institution in the world, attracting 8.7 million people in 2024.

Another of Paris’s most popular museums, the Pompidou Centre, is to close later this year for a €262m renovation.

The Louvre proposals have sparked renewed debate about free admission to national collections in the UK, months after former British Museum director Mark Jones called for fees to be introduced for overseas tourists.

“In not charging for entry, the UK’s national museums are, as any British tourist knows, anomalous,” wrote Observer columnist Catherine Bennett over the weekend. Bennett said admission fees for overseas tourists would help national institutions avoid reputation-damaging sponsorship deals and enable them to increase wages for underpaid staff.

Current British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan has defended the UK's free admission policy, however, saying in an interview last year that “it makes our museums very special”.