Le Louvre, an expensive and contested rebirth

Posted on April 13, 2025 at 3:06 pm. / Modified April 13, 2025 at 5:08 p.m.

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City in the city with its 2,300 agents, its 15 kilometers of rooms and corridors and its collection of 500,000 works, the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, is on the way to knowing a “new renaissance” under the warden of its president, and with the support of the President of the Republic and the boss of the luxury group LVMH, owner of the neighboring department store.

It all started with the sending, on January 13, of a confidential note from Laurence des Cars to the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati. The president of the Louvre, the first woman at her head, paints a dark picture of the state of the institution she directs. It points to the “multiplication of damage in the spaces of the museum, sometimes very degraded. Some are no longer waterproof, when others experience disturbing temperature variations endangering the conservation of works. ”