The ‘Mona Lisa’ Is Moving to a Room of Her Own at the Louvre

Last spring, the world’s most-visited art museum, the Louvre in Paris, proposed moving its most popular artwork—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—to its own subterranean room. Now, that idea is becoming reality.

As French President Emmanuel Macron announced this week, speaking in front of Leonardo’s iconic 16th-century portrait in the museum’s Salle des États gallery, the move comes amidst a large-scale expansion and renovation of the museum.

“The Louvre will be redesigned and restored to become the epicenter of art history for our country and beyond,” Macron told reporters, per the New York Times’ Aurelien Breeden. The renovations are intended to alleviate overcrowding at the museum—which is flooded with almost nine million visitors each year.

The museum will gain several new exhibition spaces, including one beneath its easternmost courtyard, the Cour Carrée. This room will host the Mona Lisa, and visitors will be able to purchase a special ticket to enter it. Currently, the portrait receives as many as 25,000 daily visitors, each getting less than a minute to view it.

“Every day, this very room is the scene of intense agitation,” Laurence des Cars, the Louvre’s director, said at the press conference, according to the Washington Post’s Ellen Francis. “Exceptional visitor numbers are not a curse, they’re a source of pride. … It’s also a challenge to reinvent ourselves and remain faithful to our public service mission.”

The announcement comes just a week after the publication of a leaked memo written by des Cars, in which she calls visiting the Louvre a “physical ordeal.”

“Accessing the artworks takes time and is not always easy,” des Cars wrote, per the Guardian’s Ashifa Kassam. “Visitors have no space to take a break. The food options and restroom facilities are insufficient in volume, falling below international standards. The signage needs to be completely redesigned.”

The renovation will also include the installation of a new entrance on the Louvre’s east side near the Seine River to spread out guests. Expected to be finished in 2031, the project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, per the Washington Post. Macron said that it will be paid for by donations, license royalties and ticketing revenue.

Built in the late 12th century under the French king Philip II, the Louvre began as a royal fortress. During the 16th century, Francis I demolished the old fortress and rebuilt it as a Renaissance-style palace. The building housed royalty until the 1600s, when Louis XIV built a new residence for monarchs, the Palace of Versailles. In the late 18th century, the old palace became a public art museum—later dubbed “the Louvre.”

The palatial building’s last large renovation happened in the 1980s, per the Washington Post. It included the installation of architect I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid, which stands over the museum’s current entrance. At that time, the museum welcomed about four million visitors each year. The new eastern entrance will be designed by the winner of an international competition to be held this year.

As Julien Lacaze, president of the French heritage protection association Sites & Monuments, tells the Times, the Louvre needs to direct the flow of visitors more effectively and improve the promotion of its massive collection. (The Louvre owns some 500,000 artworks, 30,000 of which are on display.)

“It’s the biggest museum in the world,” Lecaze adds, “but tourists only come to see five works of art.”