Museum workers are making use of the closure to renovate the world-famous museum with no reopening date set in sight due to the ongoing pandemic
The Louvre, the world's largest art museum and home of the world-famous painting, Mona Lisa, is getting a makeover. The museum attracts 9.6 million visitors a year—making it the most visited museum in the world—until the pandemic put international travel on hold, with the museum hit with a massive visitor decline, only seeing some 30,000–40,000 visitors per day. It's definitely rare for the 518-year-old Mona Lisa to see her home without the crowds.
But museum workers are taking advantage of the closure since October 2020 to renovate The Louvre. The closure comes as part of France's effort to combat the spread of Covid-19. The once overwhelmed museum workers are carrying out major revamps including speeding up maintenance operations, repair works that are almost difficult to schedule during normal operations, adding new security systems, cleaning sculptures, checking artefacts and inventories and many other restoration work.
"When the museum reopens, everything will be perfect for its visitors—this Sleeping Beauty will have had the time to powder her nose," Elisabeth Antoine-Konig, an artefacts department curator told Associated Press. "Visitors will be happy to see again these now well-lit rooms with polished floors and remodelled display cases."
A reopening date is not yet set but the closure gives its workers some breather after they walked out in 2019 due to overcrowding. Most of the renovation work could only be done on Tuesdays, the museum's only closed day in the week. But now instead of a crowd of people swarming the historic museum, it's machines drilling, hammers tapping and brushes scrubbing.
While we still can't see the museum in person as international travel is still off the cards, virtual tours are available for your enjoyment. The Parisian museum's renovation is just one of the major renovations happening in Paris, other makeovers include the Centre Pompidou, the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Élysées most of which are being redesigned for the 2024 Olympics.
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