One of world’s most visited museums reopened to the public on Monday three and a half months of COVID-19 lockdown. France’s iconic Louvre Museum re-opened, without lengthy queues of visitors as before the coronavirus pandemic.
Some 7,000 reservations have been made for the opening day while before the pandemic the museum had around 30,000 visitors each day, Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of Louvre, said. For those who arrived for a visit, mask-wearing is compulsory. Slots of 500 visitors every half hour have been set up to comply with health rules.
The Louvre and Tuileries National Estate includes several gardens, which cover an area of 30 hectares. Louvre is the world’s largest art museum and a historic monument. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as the Louvre castle in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property.
To ensure optimal conditions, all visitors are required to book a time slot and wear a mask in the museum. All the safety and social distancing measures recommended for public spaces are also applied. The museum has installed hand gel dispensers and put up signs reminding one-meter distance. Blue arrows and ground markings indicate the one-way direction of visiting route — no possibility of going back. Closed since March 13 due to the epidemic, Louvre lost about 40 million euros (45 million U.S. dollars) in ticket revenues, cancelled events, and shop sales, according to Martinez.
Visitors will be able to explore 45,000 m2 of the palace and discover over 32,000 artworks, from the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa to the lesser-known decorative arts of the Middle Ages and the garden statuary of some of the most grand residences of 17th-century France. Before the pandemic, 75 percent of the museum’s visitors were foreign ones. As travel bans just started to ease beyond Europe, visitors from countries like China, South Korea, Japan, the U.S., Brazil have not returned yet and are not likely so in the near future.