The Louvre in Paris closes unexpectedly as staff protest conditions

THE LustThe most visited museum in the world and a global symbol of art, beauty and endurance, were closed on Monday – not by war, not by terror, but by its own exhausted staff, who say that the institution collapses from the inside.

It was an almost unthinkable show: the house of works by Leonardo da Vinci and the millennia of the greatest treasures of civilization – paralyzed by the very people responsible for welcoming the world in its galleries.

The spontaneous strike broke out during an internal routine meeting, while the gallery attendants, the ticket agents and the security staff refused to take their posts to protest against unmanageable crowds, the chronic breach and what a union qualified as “uninformed” working conditions.

This is a rare thing for the Louvre to close its doors to the public. This happened during the war, during the pandemic, and in a handful of strikes – including spontaneous debraying on overcrowding in 2019 and security fears in 2013. But that rarely looked like this: tourists who border the place, tickets in hand, without clear explanation for why the museum had, without warning, simply stopped.

“This is the Mona Lisa moans here,” said Kevin Ward, 62, from Milwaukee, one of the thousands of confused visitors have turned into immobile lines under the glass pyramid of Im Pei. “Thousands of people waiting, no communication, no explanation. I assume that even she needs a day off.”

The moment felt bigger than a work manifestation. The Louvre has become a bell tower of the world superchoustal – a golden palace overwhelmed by its own popularity. While the tourist magnets of Venice at Acropolis rush to the crowd, the most emblematic museum in the world reaches its own account.

The disturbance occurs only a few months after President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a scanning decade plan To save the Louvre from precisely the problems that are now softening – water leaks, dangerous temperature oscillations, obsolete infrastructure and pedestrian traffic far beyond what the museum can manage. But for workers in the field, this promised future feels distant.

“We cannot wait six years for help,” said Sarah Sefian of the CGT-Culture Union. “Our teams are under pressure now. It is not only a question of art – these are people who protect it.”

She said that what had started as a scheduled monthly information session “turned into a massive expression of exasperation”. The discussions between workers and management started at 10:30 am and continued in the afternoon. In the early afternoon, the museum remained closed.

The Louvre welcomed 8.7 million visitors last year – more than double what its infrastructure was designed to adapt. Even with a daily ceiling of 30,000, the staff says that experience has become a daily endurance test, with too few rest areas, limited bathrooms and summer heat amplified by the greenhouse effect of the pyramid.

At the center of all this, as always, the Mona Lisa – a portrait of the 16th century which attracts modern crowds more similar to a meeting of celebrities than an artistic experience. About 20,000 people a day crowd in the States room, the largest room in the museum, just to break a selfie with the enigmatic woman of Leonardo da Vinci behind a protective window. The scene is often noisy, which is jostling and so dense that many take a look at the masterpieces which flanked it – works by Titian and Véronèse which become largely ignored.

“You don’t see painting,” said Ji-Hyun Park, 28, who stole from Seoul in Paris. “You see phones. You see elbows. You feel heat. And then, you are pushed.”

Macron’s renovation plan, nicknamed the “Louvre New Renaissance”, promises a remedy. The Mona Lisa will finally get its own dedicated room, accessible through a time entrance ticket. A new entrance near the Seine river is also planned by 2031 to relieve the pressure from the submerged pyramid center.

In a disclosed memo, the president of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, warned that certain parts of the building are “no longer waterproof”, that temperature fluctuations endanger the invaluable art, and that even the basic needs of visitors – food, toilets, signaling – fall below international standards. She described the experience simply as “a physical test”.

“We have problems with the building,” admitted Cars News earlier this year. She said that problems are due in part to age, because the palace that houses the museum was initially built at the beginning of the 13th century.

“There are nine centuries of history, in the heart of Paris and in the heart of the history of France,” said buses.

She also said that one of the objectives of the renovation was to improve the flow of visitors, so that people can find the collections they most easily want to see “and also discover the wonders of the Louvre”.

The complete renovation plan – with a expected cost of 700 to 800 million euros (around 810 million to $ 930 million) – is expected to be funded by ticket income, private donations, public funds and license fees of the ABU Dhabi branch of the Louvre. Tourist prices for EU tourists are expected to increase later this year.