At the Musée du Louvre, Paris, January 23, 2025. DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP
Thirty seconds face-to-face with the Mona Lisa: That’s more than visitors can currently manage to snatch amid the jostling crowds in the Salle des Etats, where the iconic painting has been displayed since 1966. Yet this is the promise that will be made to Louvre visitors in the coming years, when the painting will be showcased at the heart of its very own gallery. This new setting is the centerpiece of the competition that five international teams have been working on since October 2025, and represents the most high-profile and controversial element of the museum’s major overhaul, dubbed Louvre-Nouvelle Renaissance and launched with fanfare by President Emmanuel Macron in January 2025.
The new gallery will be located somewhere within the Sully quadrilateral, the section of buildings surrounding the Cour Carrée, one of the palace’s main courtyards. It will be directly connected to a special Mona Lisa shop, from which foreign tourists (who make up 70% of visitors, and even more around the Mona Lisa) will be funneled back into the museum. A new entrance will serve this wing, accessible via the museum’s eastern facade, at the foot of Perrault’s colonnade, facing the Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois church.
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