Comment: French plan to upgrade Louvre is long overdue

The morning after Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that the Louvre is to receive a €900million facelift by 2031 it is business as usual outside the museum. 

That is to say, the lines are already stretching around the iconic pyramid, the selfie sticks are being rattled like sabres, and the staff charged with challenging queue-jumpers are showing the same defeated expression as Michelangelo’s Dying Slave inside. 

Art historian Richard Fly wrote that the sculpture "suggests that moment when life capitulates before the relentless force of dead matter”. Soon we will all be wearing this look.

President Macron’s promise of an upgrade was prompted by a leaked memo, less than a week before, from the museum’s director to the Minister of Culture. It listed all the ways that visiting the Louvre has become a “physical ordeal”.

Read more: American and British tourists will pay more to visit the Louvre - what about visa and residency card holders?

It is not just the crowds – all 8.7 million per year – but also the substandard catering, restroom facilities and signage, she wrote. 

Add to this “no space to take a break, the sizzling “greenhouse effect” of the glass pyramid in summer, bad acoustics and the brute sardining required for your 50 seconds in front of the Mona Lisa.

For all of this I have paid €22.

Long queues

The problem with the Louvre is that it was not designed to be a museum, and so lacks coherence. 

Originally built as a fortress (ergo to be impenetrable) in the late 12th Century, Francis I later turned it into a palace. 

It was enlarged with subsequent monarchs until Louis XIV moved the royal residence to Versailles in 1682. 

By this time it had reached a monumental size. It boasts a total surface area of about 73,000m², designed around three interconnected wings. 

I was going to write that two of these extend like the arms of a speculum, but the Louvre’s entrances are so notoriously, intractably tight that the analogy instantly falls apart. 

Even on a Wednesday, in late January, I have to queue for 45 minutes to get in. No surprise that one of Macron’s renovation priorities is a “new grand entrance” near the Seine.

Didier Virlogeux, from Paris, assures me this is a “quiet day”.

 A regular visitor to the museum for its temporary exhibitions, he tries to avoid the “too many people, too many phones” that mushroom from the Mona Lisa and gravitates instead to the less frequented rooms.

Lack of signs

Others, like me, do not have the luxury of his indifference to Da Vinci – nor his familiarity with the museum’s lay-out. I pick up a map and resolve to head straight for La Joconde. 

Impossible. The map is inscrutable and, as the leaked memo complained, signage is appalling. 

This is surprising in any art museum, but for one that sets so much store in having Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People hanging on its walls – a painting all about being stridently ushered forward – the lack of obvious directional markers is mystifying. 

Read more: Iconic 'French liberty' painting returns to the Louvre

I am not alone. Everyone is running around like headless chickens, or, more, apposite, like the acephalous goddess Niké that greets you at the top of the main staircase in The Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Raquel Brás, from Brazil, said her quest to track down the Mona Lisa was frustrated not just by the museum’s bewildering configuration, but being accosted by other lost visitors on her labyrinthine way, hoping she might somehow be able to help them.

“It’s just so confusing!” she complained.

Angel and Derek, visiting from the US, were similarly baffled when they lost signs for the Venus de Milo, eventually stumbling upon it “by accident”. 

“Visiting the Louvre can be tiring,” warns the museum’s website. “To make sure your experience is pleasurable, keep it short.”

As things stand, this is patently impossible without missing out on many of the highlights. 

Any upgrade would benefit from colour-coded arrows on the floor, clearly showing the fastest route through the top ten of its 35,000 works of art. 

Make it green, like they do on the ski slopes, to make it expressly clear that this way is for inexperienced art dummies like me, and work up to something like a five-hour ‘black run’ for the most culturally athletic. 

‘Crazy in Louvre’

In the Louvre’s defence, I later discovered that its website does have a ‘Discover’ section to help you decide which rooms to visit, including themed visitor trails. 

‘The Louvre’s Masterpieces’ is an obvious one for first-timers, but there is also ‘Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Louvre Highlights’ on there if you are inspired, rather, to relive the Carters’ ‘APES**T music video, filmed in the museum in 2018.

Which brings us neatly to the news that Mona Lisa is to have her own, imminent, Beyoncé moment and finally go solo (does that make Veronese’s La Bella Nani, hung in the same room, The Louvre’s Kelly Rowland? At least we can all probably agree that ‘Destiny’s Child’ itself sounds like a plausible name for a lost Botticelli masterpiece).

It is believed that around three-quarters of the museum's 30,000 daily visitors traipse to the Salle des Etats to see Leonardo da Vinci's painting. 

Most of them, like me, largely overlook the embarrassment of other riches on display in their haste to do so. 

Eventually finding her, however, throws open a whole new trauma.

“The Mona Lisa room is chaos,” said Derek and Angel. “Seeing the painting anywhere near up close depends on being able to push your way to the front of the throng.”

Under the plans announced by Macron, the Mona Lisa will be moved to a separate, dedicated room, potentially only accessible to visitors through a special ticket. 

‘If you like it, then you shoulda put kerching on it’, seems to be the agreed new translation of that enigmatic smile.

Non-EU tourists to pay more 

All the visitors I spoke to believe this is a good idea, despite potentially having to fork out extra money for the privilege. 

A more contentious topic, when it comes to ticketing, are plans for non-European tourists to pay an additional tariff for general entry to the museum. 

This surcharge would help finance the huge cost of renovations, said Macron. The rate, which is not yet known, will apply to all visitors from outside the EU from January 1, 2026. 

Read more: Do foreign people living in France get free entry to museums?

It certainly sounds like a good money-spinner – last year more than 75% of Louvre visitors hailed from outside France, after all – but is it fair?

“Not at all,” said Raquel, even though her dual Portuguese nationality would let her evade this ‘tax’ for holding a Brazilian passport.

Americans Angel and Derek were similarly unimpressed, but admitted they would be prepared to pay up to 10% more if they had to.

“The €22 entrance fee is already high,” they said, “especially considering we went to the British Museum on the UK leg of our holiday, which was free.

“But we suppose the Louvre does represent value considering how much art is in it. You can spend a lot of time here and really get your money’s worth.”

Nevertheless, grading prices based on place of birth seems to defeat the whole point of art, which is, surely, to highlight the commonality of human experience. 

It is the universal language that transcends cultures, borders and backgrounds. 

My Louvre visit may have been an exercise in endurance but it also showed me that whether Brazilian, American, British or French, we were all its Dying Slaves together.

Will I be back? Actually, yes, as every hollow-eyed visitor I spoke to that day also avowed. Just not until after its so-called ‘New Renaissance’.