Reopening of the Louvre museum

Audio 02:31

By: Carmen Lunsmann

It is the reopening of the largest museum in the world. After nearly four months of closure, we will once again be able to access the heart of the Louvre. A Louvre as you have never seen it, with an attendance limited to 30% of the usual affluence, Covid-19 obliges, and with the greatest respect for sanitary rules.

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The Louvre museum normally receives 10 million visitors a year: up to a million a month in summer, 40,000 people a day. During the confinement, a cathedral silence reigned within the walls of this 800 hundred year old palace. Leila Cherif-Hadria, assistant to the director in charge of surveillance: “ It was very silent, calm. I had never known since I was at the museum, I have been working there for twenty years. So a museum empty of people, a few agents to manage security, monitor the conservation of the works. We didn't see a ghost (laughs). We were alone and for a very long time without any noise. It is quite confusing. We knew that we were living something unique and that would happen again, I hope, never again, but it was a pretty magical moment since there was also no one in the streets around, so a moment a little suspended in time.  "

To restart the machine, the Louvre has put in place a whole arsenal of reassuring measures: frost, masks, signposted routes, closed changing rooms, but loan of disinfected strollers or wheelchairs possible - everything is done to reassure visitors whose number is regulated via online reservations. Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the Louvre: “  Psychologically, we also come out of two, three months of confinement. Maybe people don't want to be in confined spaces. However, the Louvre is not a confined space. There are large sculpture courts, large spaces. However, it is true that all the polls seem to indicate this: there are already 60% of French people who do not go to the museum. "

The primary objective: to win back the local public, for example through more personalized visits. Because in the absence of non-European tourists - American and Chinese above all -, the attendance of the museum is in free fall: "  If the French and European public is at the rendezvous, the attendance will be between 20 and 30%, therefore maximum 10,000 people per day. So, it is also an opportunity to see or review rooms in the museum otherwise.  "

Mona Lisa, the star of the Louvre, accessible via a waiting park with parking points, is one of the 30,000 works spread over 45,000 m2, or 70% of the spaces. Afterwards, we will advise: “  We have lost 10 million euros per month, so here we have exceeded 40 million since the closure began. So today, it's true that we don't know what the future will be like. On the other hand, the desire of the Louvre abroad, the diversification also of resources with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, with a certain number of exhibitions abroad, with our endowment fund also which guarantees income, we do not depend than ticketing. And then, even if we think we are going through this difficult passage, we know that we will rebound. "

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