It is now possible to admire the most beautiful pieces in the Louvre museum without leaving your living room: the famous museum has opened a new database where all the works in its collections, whether on display or not, are accessible. free to the public via the Internet, already with notices on three quarters of them.

"This is a step prepared for many years with the aim of serving the general public as well as the public of researchers. Accessibility is at the heart of our missions", underlined in a videoconference the president and director of the Louvre Jean-Luc Martinez.

The new site already includes more than 482,000 widely illustrated notices, or about three-quarters of the collections.

It replaces the old Atlas base, whose perimeter was limited to the works on display.

The consultation will allow you to explore the emblematic works as well as to consult, for example, fragmentary archaeological series of Greek antiquities.

Collections.louvre.fr has therefore been designed for both researchers and amateurs with numerous entries, routes, tools, notices, etc.

The platform also covers the Delacroix museum (which depends on the Louvre), the sculptures of the Tuileries and the works recovered in Germany since 1945 and entrusted to the custody of the Louvre pending their possible return to their despoiled owner.

A work can be searched, whether it is exhibited in theaters, on deposit in other institutions or in reserves, in particular those stored in the new ultramodern center in Liévin (Pas-de-Calais).

Virtual tours on the rise

In addition to this platform, there is a new website, louvre.fr, which aims to be more ergonomic, more visual, more immersive, more narrative.

It is accessible in French, English, Spanish and Chinese, also making a large place for images and video.

It was designed primarily for practical use on a tablet or smartphone, studies having shown that 60% of consultations were already done through these means.

It is designed for all audiences, from schoolchildren to many foreign tourists, with general admission.  

"There was a public appetite for narrative [around the works and the museum] to which we responded", underlined Dominique de Font-Réaulx, director of mediation and cultural programming, explaining that "a large place was given to the still and animated image [to accompany these stories in the largest museum in the world] ".

The year Covid 2020 was marked by an explosion of visits to the Louvre site and its increased presence on social networks: 21 million visits to louvre.fr and 10 million subscribers on the networks. 

With AFP

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