The Louvre Museum in Paris will move the Mona Lisa to a newly created exhibition space, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced on Tuesday as he unveiled sweeping plans to renovate the world’s biggest and most visited museum.
Speaking in front of La Gioconda herself, Macron also announced that the Louvre would create a new entrance in its easternmost facade to alleviate overcrowding at the museum, which is swarmed by nearly nine million visitors.
“Long live the Louvre’s new renaissance!” Macron said at the end of a carefully choreographed speech, as the Mona Lisa’s famous gaze peered from behind him.
The Louvre Pyramid, the glass-and-steel entrance that was designed by the architect I.M. Pei in the 1980s, during the museum’s last major overhaul, was intended to welcome half the visitors it currently does. Already, the museum has capped daily attendance at 30,000 people.
An estimated 80 per cent of those crowds come for Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece — a magnet for droves of selfie-snapping tourists that has become a crowd-control headache, and for several years there have been suggestions the painting should be moved to its own room.
Macron did not disclose the cost, estimated to run into hundreds of millions of euros, to modernise the most visited museum in the world, plagued with outdated facilities.
The renovation will include a new entrance near the Seine, to be opened by 2031, and the creation of underground rooms, Macron said.