How visiting the Louvre became a nightmare

When I visited the Louvre last November, I had the foresight to buy a €22 ticket in advance. Still, a queue zig-zagged across the Cour Napoléon as cold, restless tourists took photos beside its iconic pyramid. Forty-five minutes later – an hour past our booked entry time – we descended on the escalator into the cavernous entry hall. Our visit didn’t improve from there. As swarms of people made a beeline for the Salle des États to see the Mona Lisa, smartphones at the ready, my fiancé and I attempted a circular route through the gallery’s lower levels.

We found the spaces so overcrowded and the signage so poor it rendered the museum virtually unnavigable. Several hours later – I lost track of time, and not in a good way – we queued once more for an overpriced americano from a Paul concession under the pyramid, and collapsed on a bench, our feet aching.

None of this is news, not least to the custodians of the museum themselves. In a leaked memo, Laurence des Cars, the Louvre’s director, said it has deteriorated to the degree that a visit to the museum is a “physical ordeal”.

Parts of the museum, which is the world’s most visited, are in “very poor condition,” she continued. Some are “no longer watertight, while others experience significant temperature variations, endangering the preservation of artworks.” Many of its buildings, she says, are reaching “a worrying level of obsolescence”.

The structural issues are one thing; to tourists, more pressing is the overcrowding and sub-par food and facilities. Des Cars, who became head of the institution in 2021, said these fall “well below international standards”. The timed entry slots are an unwelcome hangover from Covid days.

To add insult to injury, this week president Emmanuel Macron has announced that British tourists will pay extra for the privilege, as part of a drive to raise money for much-needed refurbishments from non-EU citizens. As part of a museum-wide renovation expected to cost up to €800 million, the Mona Lisa will finally be afforded a room – and an entrance – of her own.

Having left it crumbling for the duration of his seven-year presidency, there is also a sense that Macron has pushed forward with its renovation, named “New Renaissance,” to burnish his reputation as he prepares to leave office in 2027.

But it has problems that cannot easily be solved, even with a multi-million pound cash injection. The Mona Lisa is one reason why the Louvre – both a celebrated cultural institution and a vital political tool – was able to deteriorate to such a degree.

The sheer popularity of its most famous painting has strained its infrastructure and markedly worsened the visitor experience. Of the nine million visitors to the Louvre each year, a staggering 70 per cent are there just for a glimpse of the portrait’s enigmatic smile.

When I did eventually join the throng to see da Vinci’s masterpiece in November, we were rushed along by stewards in a queue 25 people deep. Having endured a historic acid attack, a cake, and this month, a thermos of pumpkin soup thrown by climate protestors, the Mona Lisa is guarded more closely than ever, leading to a heavy security presence and a hassled, austere atmosphere.

The popularity of the painting is a double-edged sword. It draws visitors in, but in some ways the museum’s main problem is its “freak celebrity,” explains Alastair Sooke, the Telegraph’s chief art critic. “There’s no other work that commands these crowds,” he says. “An extravagantly high proportion of the people who visit understandably want to see this painting.”

This causes obvious practical problems for visitors as the building itself cannot cope. “You are forced to go through long queues at the entrance, very heavy security and then traipse along this Where’s Wally? trail that eventually takes you to the room, [which] was totally chaotic,” he adds. The other masterpieces in the Louvre’s largest room are almost completely ignored, Sooke says. “I went and stood by these pictures and nobody stopped.”

Over the past two decades, the number of yearly visitors to the Louvre has risen significantly, yet its infrastructure and facilities for visitors have not risen to the challenge – it has not had a significant revamp since the construction of I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid in 1989. In 2005, it had 7.3 million visitors; by 2010 that had risen to 8.5m, then 8.6m in 2015 and 8.9m by 2023. The ticket price has risen in tandem: from €7.50 in 2003, to €10 in 2011, €15 in 2015. It is now a hefty €22.

Perhaps some of these problems could be solved by learning by example from the museum’s great European neighbours. Emily Gordenker, director of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum, which welcomed 1.7 million visitors last year (a fraction of the Louvre), said it had made the “difficult decision” to cap visitor numbers per day.

“It’s a relatively small building and we limit it to 5,000 visitors per day, which is an awful lot for our building,” she said on the Today programme. “We’ve done that to improve the experience people have, and it has made a marked difference.” De Car imposed a 30,000-per-day visitor cap on the Louvre in 2022, but it seems to have done little to address chronic overcrowding.

“In a way, it’s a nice problem to have – so much interest, so many visitors… but it brings with it another kind of a burden,” Gordenker said. She added that “nobody is served by standing 30 feet away from the painting itself… with lots of people in front of them.”

It should not, however, look to Britain for inspiration. “The British Museum is approaching a similar crisis,” says Sooke. “It’s our most visited, our prestige museum, and currently the visitor experience is dire.” It has several parallels with the Louvre – overbearing private security, irritating timeslots, tired and antiquated galleries.

Nick Trend, the Telegraph’s consumer and culture editor, says that although other museums manage queues better – the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid being one example – the Louvre does have “particular problems that others don’t.”

“It has absolutely enormous collections and one thing that everyone wants to see, miles and miles of corridors and acres of rooms in bizarre, interlocked buildings. These things would be a problem anywhere,” he says. “I think the Louvre will always have a problem.”

Trend suggests visiting in winter or, better yet, going somewhere else. “The Prado [in Madrid] has free entry at the end of the day and very long opening hours, which helps,” he says. “If you want to see great art, particularly in the high season, go there, or to Vienna.”

Having braved the crowds and trekked the corridors, I’m inclined to agree. I hadn’t been to the Louvre for ten years before I visited last autumn. I’ll leave it another ten – at least – before I go back.