The Louvre Museum, in crisis since the October burglary, is “out of steam” and faces “a wall of investments” necessary to renovate its aging equipment, its president Christophe Leribault said this Wednesday. “We can say it unequivocally: despite its imposing majesty, despite the daily commitment of its teams, it is a Louvre on its last legs,” the leader appointed in February declared before a Senate commission. “Its equipment and infrastructure are reaching the end of their cycle.”
The theft of the Crown Jewels on October 19 exposed security flaws and delays in upgrading equipment at the world’s most visited museum. “We are therefore at a crossroads, building emergencies are piling up and we are facing a wall of investments which obviously is not what we want to hear,” declared Christophe Leribault, who announced that more than 10,000 vases Greeks had to be moved to carry out repair work on one of the wings of the Louvre. In this context, the president defended the “absolute necessity” of carrying out the colossal project to renovate the museum called Louvre Nouvelle renaissance, estimated at more than a billion euros.
A new video surveillance system
Regarding the security of the museum, Christophe Leribault affirms “to tackle the necessary emergencies head on” and announces the implementation from January 2027 of the new perimeter video surveillance system. “We of course urgently installed a few additional cameras in absolutely critical locations where we had noticed a deficiency, but we cannot recreate a whole new network with hundreds of cameras without strengthening the technical framework,” he explained, announcing the creation in October of a new security PC.
The position of security coordinator, the creation of which was announced in the wake of the burglary, is entrusted to Olivier Goupil, former divisional commissioner and until now responsible for security at the RATP, announced the manager, according to whom “the bruise of the “The flight and the trauma of the months that followed are still very vivid” within the museum.
