As the Louvre embarks on major €800 million renovation works, set for completion by 2031, the museum has already unveiled a new pricing plan and tourists hoping to admire Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting will soon need to budget for an extra ticket.
Following approval from France’s National Commission for Heritage and Architecture, the museum’s star attraction will soon have her own dedicated 3,000 m² gallery on the refurbished grounds in the heart of Paris. Louvre Director Laurence des Cars confirmed to Le Figaro that the new ‘Mona Lisa trail’ will ‘enable visitors not only to contemplate Mona Lisa – a complicated task at the moment – but also to understand her through other displays on her history.’
The renovation plans, described by des Cars as ‘of great quality, on a par with the global masterpiece that will be present in it’, are set to improve the visitor experience. However, they come with a price tag: once the new gallery opens, visitors will need not only a general admission ticket to the Louvre but also a second, extra ticket to the Mona Lisa Gallery. The final price of this additional ticket has not yet been announced.
Currently, a standard Louvre ticket costs €22. From January 2026, non-EU visitors will be expected to pay more, with the additional revenue, estimated at €20 million, contributing to the financing of the extensive works.
An international architecture competition will open on 27 June, calling on architects to present their vision for the new Mona Lisa trail, the redesigned exhibition hall, and improved entrance routes.
The new visitor flow system is urgently needed. On 16 June, the museum was forced to close temporarily after staff staged a spontaneous strike, denouncing ‘untenable’ working conditions due to chronic overcrowding. The Louvre attracts about 9 million visitors a year, and the daily cap of 30,000 visitors is regularly exceeded. According to the museum, 80% of visitors prioritise seeing the Mona Lisa, creating severe congestion. Some come solely to see her only.
Des Cars further told Le Figaro that the redesign is largely driven by the need to ease this pressure and would enhance the infrastructure she has privately described as ‘structurally unable to cope’. ‘We need to think about our displays and give our masterpieces space to breathe,’ she said.
Currently housed in the Salle des États, the painting is set to be moved to a new gallery beneath the Cour Carrée courtyard.
In a confidential letter to Culture Minister Rachida Dati, des Cars warned that ‘the Louvre’s buildings are reaching a worrying level of obsolescence’ and that ‘some spaces are no longer watertight, while others experience significant temperature variations, endangering the preservation of artworks’. She also described the pyramid entrance as ‘inhospitable on hot days, acting like a greenhouse, with poor acoustic treatment’.
In addition to the Mona Lisa upgrade, the broader ‘Nouveau Louvre’ project will focus on uncluttering the museum, creating more spacious galleries, and improving entry points to reduce the notoriously long queues. This is the museum’s most significant transformation since the construction of I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid in the 1980s.
Announced by President Emmanuel Macron four months ago, the funding plan aims to avoid burdening French taxpayers. Financing will rely on museum self-funding – through ticket sales, revenue from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, private donors, and the anticipated extra surcharge for non-EU visitors.
Other major French cultural institutions, such as Versailles and the Musée d’Orsay, are expected to follow suit with similar pricing strategies.
