Visiting the Louvre has develop into a “bodily ordeal” because the throngs of vacationers, leaks and substandard catering take a toll on the world’s most-visited museum, its director has mentioned in a leaked memo.
The doc, written by Laurence des Automobiles for the French tradition minister, Rachida Dati, however leaked to the media on Thursday, sounded the alarm over the state of the Paris museum.
Designed to welcome about 4 million annual guests, the Louvre final 12 months obtained greater than double that quantity, with 8.7 million folks – 70% of them from exterior France – flocking to its famed galleries.
However in her memo, revealed on Thursday by Le Parisien newspaper, Des Automobiles, the primary lady to go the gallery, was blunt in her view of what usually greets guests.
“Visiting the Louvre is a bodily ordeal; accessing the artworks takes time and isn’t all the time straightforward,” she wrote.
“Guests haven’t any area to take a break. The meals choices and restroom services are inadequate in quantity, falling beneath worldwide requirements. The signage must be fully redesigned.”
Concern over the crowds added to the harm seen within the museum areas, a few of which have been in “very poor situation”, mentioned Des Automobiles. In some instances, areas “are now not watertight, whereas others expertise important temperature variations, endangering the preservation of artworks”, she wrote.
The memo acknowledged the French authorities’s present budgetary limitations however argued that the museum was in want of an overhaul that will most likely be pricey and technically difficult.
Even one of many museum’s latest additions – a glass pyramid designed by the Chinese language-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei, inaugurated in 1989 and utilized by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for a state dinner because the Paris Olympics kicked off in July – had “main shortcomings”, mentioned Des Automobiles.
“On very popular days, the glass roof creates a greenhouse impact, making this area very inhospitable for the general public who move by and the brokers who work there,” she wrote, including that the acoustics of the world meant it was usually noisy.
The memo additionally harassed the necessity to reassess how the Louvre’s hottest attraction, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, was offered. Final 12 months Des Automobiles mentioned the overwhelming majority of the museum’s guests, about 20,000 folks a day, had braved the crowds to get a glimpse of the portray.
On the time, she speculated that the paintings may get a room of its personal in hope of providing the jostling crowds a greater view of Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile.
Des Automobiles grew to become head of the establishment in 2021. Together with shifting to impose a every day cap on guests and increasing the opening hours, she has been vocal in regards to the museum reaching “saturation level”.
The leaked memo provides the Louvre to the listing of flashpoints throughout the continent as officers throughout Europe grapple with the results of overtourism.
In December, officers in Rome mentioned guests to the Trevi fountain could be restricted to 400 folks at a time, and in Greece authorities have carried out a time-slot system for the Acropolis to ease congestion, echoing a method already in place at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica.
In Venice, lengthy the continent’s dominant image of overtourism, native authorities have experimented with an entry cost for guests.
The Louvre, nonetheless, has beforehand sounded the alarm over its swelling crowds of tourists. In 2019, after greater than 10 million folks visited the 12 months earlier than, workers on the museum went on a short strike, arguing that their numbers have been now not adequate to deal with the crowds.
“The Louvre is suffocating,” the Sud Tradition Solidaires Union mentioned in a press release on the time. “Whereas the general public has elevated by greater than 20% since 2009, the palace has not grown … the scenario is untenable.”
