In November 1992, after going through the end of the marriages of three of her four children, with all the scandalous details that the British tabloids found on the subject and seeing her beloved Windsor Castle partially destroyed by a fire, Queen Elizabeth II referred to the a terrible year in a speech that would mark his long reign. But the Latin expression would also now be very well applied to the Louvre’s disastrous year. In addition to the robbery in October that resulted in the theft of eight priceless jewels, whose whereabouts remain unknown, having to close one of its rooms due to the risk of collapse, and after the flooding of the Egyptian Antiquities library, this week the employees of the largest museum in the world voted for a strike that dictated the total closure of the Louvre for two days and its only partial reopening since then.
Around 400 museum employees “unanimously voted to strike“, in a “renewable” movement, the CGT and CFDT unions announced on Monday. And some of these employees gathered in front of the famous Louvre pyramid to protest against the problems of lack of staff, the degradation of the building or the increase in entrances for non-Europeans. Since then, meetings between union representatives and the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, have multiplied. The candidate for the Paris Chamber in next year’s elections has already agreed to cancel the planned reduction of 5.7 million euros in the Louvre’s allocation for 2026. And the ministry proposes opening recruitment positions dedicated to the museum’s service and surveillance and a salary increase that the unions would like to be permanent. But the tension remains.
The largest art museum in the world, housed in the palace of the same name, for centuries the residence of the kings of France, the Louvre is also the most visited in the world. In 2024, the Parisian museum received 8.7 million visitors.
But in its long history, the Louvre has been anything but immune to controversy. But none like the glass pyramid. Commissioned by President François Mitterrand from the architect IM Pei, the enormous glass and metal structure that today seems inseparable from the museum began to cause controversy as soon as the project was presented in 1984. Modernist audacity for its defenders, heritage betrayal for its detractors, the truth is that Pei’s pyramid was here to stay and the museum continued to attract millions.
Open to the public since 1793, I can only hope that the Louvre overcomes these difficulties so that in 2026 we can all once again enter the pyramid, go down the escalators and lose ourselves in the rooms and corridors that hide treasures such as the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo or, my favorite, the Victory of Samothrace. Among many, many others.
Executive editor of Diário de Notícias