The Louvre at "out of breath" and facing a "investment wall"according to its president Christophe Leribault

The Louvre Museum, in crisis since the October burglary, is “out of breath” and faces “a wall of investments“necessary to renovate its aging equipment,” said its president Christophe Leribault on Wednesday, June 17.

“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 told a Senate committee. “Its equipment and its infrastructure are reaching the end of their cycle.” The theft of the Crown Jewels on October 19, 2025, exposed security flaws and delays in modernizing equipment at the most visited museum in the world.

“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 Greek vases had to be moved to carry out repair work on one of the wings of the Louvre. In this context, the president defended the “absolutely necessary” to carry out the colossal renovation project of the museum called Louvre Nouvelle renaissance, estimated at more than a billion euros.

As part of this project, the Louvre Museum must find “in the coming months” 360 million euros in sponsorship to finance the vast renovation project which provides for the creation of an additional entrance and a new exhibition hall for the Mona Lisaits president said on Wednesday. “It’s quite a challenge, I don’t know if I’ll succeed.”added Christophe Leribault. A project estimated at 660 million out of a total of around a billion, one of the components of Louvre Nouvelle renaissance plans to create an additional entrance to relieve access to the side of the pyramid and to build in particular, in the basement, a new room to exhibit the Mona Lisa.

“These 660 million must be covered by patronage”indicated the head of the museum, indicating that almost half of this sum (300 million) should come from the exploitation of the Louvre brand in Abu Dhabi where the museum opened a branch in 2017.The others will be found in the coming months from large companies and individual donors. to detail Christophe Leribault in notant que “It’s obviously a lot of pressure to find these means”.

In mid-May, a group of architectural and landscape agencies was appointed to lead this part of the project but, according to the head of the Louvre, the work will not begin for a year. “We have one year (…) of finalizing the project, of consultation with the teams, with all the authorities also outside the museum, so that this project is truly solid, and above all that it is depoliticized”he explained. “Which means that the groundbreaking, I hope, will be after the elections” presidential elections in spring 2027. The second part of the project Louvre new renaissance, Valued at some 460 million euros, plans to modernize and renovate the existing building.

Regarding the security of the museum, the president of the Parisian museum affirms “take 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 noted the 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 flight and the trauma of the months that followed are still very raw” Oh, you’re a must which currently welcomes some nine million visitors per year.