Paris: France has announced a huge renovation project for the Louvre, as part of the “Louvre New Renaissance” project, which includes the creation of a new grand entrance and a room dedicated to the Mona Lisa and an increase in the entrance ticket price for non-European visitors.

According to Qatar News Agency, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Louvre days after the warning issued by Laurence de Cars, the president and director of the museum, who addressed several maintenance problems facing the site, due to excessive use that has brought some buildings on the site to “worrying levels of obsolescence”, in addition to “worrying changes in temperature that are endangering the state of preservation of the works”.

The glass pyramid that opened in 1988, an entrance that was envisioned by former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and designed by architect Ieoh Ming Pei, has become “structurally outdated” because it was designed to receive four million visitors annually. The museum received nearly nine million visitors in 2024 and 10 million before the Covid pandemic.

The first part of the modifications concerns the creation of a new large entrance on the eastern facade of the old palace. Macron had announced the intention to hold an architectural competition to open the entrance by 2031 at the latest. This will include the redesign of the square surrounding this facade, as well as the creation of new exhibition halls under the Cour Carree square in the Louvre Museum.

The second part, which is more technical, aims to adapt the museum in terms of safety and environmental standards, without closing it, and to improve comfort and the quality of protection of works. The operation is expected to last ten years and will cost between 300 and 400 million euros. The state will contribute to the financing by injecting 10 million euros into the project within the 2025 budget for preliminary studies.