The ‘Mona Lisa’ is moving to its own room in the Louvre

Last spring, the world most visited Art Museum, the Louvre in Paris, suggested moving its most popular works of art – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa– To his own underground room. Now that idea becomes reality.

As the French President Emmanuel Macron announced this week, he spoke for Leonardo’s iconic 16th-century portrait in the museum Salle des États Gallery, the move is amid a large -scale expansion and renovation of the museum.

“The Louvre will be re -designed and restored to become the epicenter of art history for our country and then,” Macron told reporters, according to the New York Times‘Aurelien varieties. The renovations are intended to illuminate the overcrowding in the museum – that is almost overwhelmed nine million Visitors every year.

The museum will win various new exhibition spaces, including one under the eastern place, the Cour Carrée. This room will Mona LisaAnd visitors can buy a special ticket to enter it. Currently, the portrait receives no fewer than 25,000 daily visitors, each of which gets less than a minute to view it.

“Every day this room is the scene of intense agitation,” said Laurence des Cars, the director of Louvre, during the press conference, according to the Washington PostEllen Francis. “Exceptional visitor numbers are not a curse, they are a source of pride. … It is also a challenge to reinvent ourselves and to remain faithful to our public service mission. “

The announcement comes only a week after the publication of a leaked memo written by des Cars, in which she calls the Louvre a ‘physical test’.

“Access to the artworks takes time and is not always easy” Guardian‘s Ashifa Kassam. “Visitors have no room to take a break. The food options and toilet facilities are insufficient volume and fall under international standards. The signage must be completely redesigned. “

The renovation also includes the installation of a new entrance on the east side of the Louvre near the Seine River to distribute guests. It is expected that the project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2031, according to the Washington Post. Macron said it will be paid by donations, license Royalties and ticketing income.

Built in the late 12th century Under the French king Philip IIThe Louvre started as a royal fort. In the 16th century, Francis I. the old fort demolished and rebuilt It as a palace in Renaissance style. The building housed royalty up to the 1600s, when Louis XIV built a new home for Monarchs, the Versailles palace. In the late 18th century, the old palace became a public art museum – later called ‘The Louvre’.

The last major renovation of the palace -like building took place in the 1980s, according to the Washington Post. It included the installation of architect Im PEIGlass pyramidthat is over the current entrance of the museum. At that time, the museum welcomed around four million visitors every year. The new eastern entrance is designed by the winner of an international competition that will be held this year.

Like Julien Lacaze, President of the French Heritage Protection Association Sites and Monumentstells the TimeThe Louvre must steer the electricity of visitors more effectively and improve the promotion of its enormous collection. (The Louvre has around 500,000 artworks, of which 30,000 can be seen.)

“It’s the largest museum in the world,” Lecaze adds, “but tourists come to see only five works of art.”