The Louvre was closed today at nine a.m., its usual opening time. The tourists questioned employees of a private security company, who gestured and shook them. Others were more eloquent. “Yes, it’s closed. Why? You know, it’s France,” said a lady with walkie talkie at the foot of the glass pyramid through which around 40,000 visitors enter each day into the most important art gallery in the world, today plunged into a process of degradation which has led its employees to call a strike.
At 9:30 a.m. we still did not know if the museum would open this Monday. The unions had called for a “reviewable strike” against the “increasingly degraded working conditions” and the deterioration of customer service at the museum. Depending on the scale of the vote, which should be known around 10 a.m., the Louvre could, due to lack of sufficient staff, close some of its spaces or even the entire building. “We are preparing for a powerful mobilization on Monday. We will have many more strikers than usual,” Christian Galani, of the CGT, the majority union at the Louvre, told Agence France-Presse (AFP), which denounces, like other professional organizations, problems of lack of personnel.
The French museum entered a complex spiral of tensions, damage and security problems which reached its climax on October 19, when four individuals entered through a balcony of the Apollon gallery and took away jewelry from the Napoleonic period valued at 88 million euros. The theft, the heist of the century for many, occurred in broad daylight, using a sort of forklift equipped with a crane parked on one of the busiest avenues in Paris. The security breaches were disastrous and subsequent explanations from museum director Laurence des Cars and Culture Minister Rachida Dati increased the sense of chaos.
The Court of Auditors has since published reports which call into question the management of the museum in recent years. The first was prepared before the assault, covers the period from 2018 to 2024 and criticizes the fact that, during all these years, the museum’s management has given priority to the acquisition of works rather than security or the improvement of facilities. 2,754 pieces were purchased in eight years. But nothing was done about the staffing problems or video surveillance in the rooms, which were clearly insufficient.
Added to the flight of the century was the closure of one of the most emblematic rooms due to the risk of collapse and flooding of the Library of Egyptian Antiquities, which damaged 400 works.
On Monday, many visitors were unaware of all these details and showed up at the museum entrance with their tickets. “They told us that it was likely that they would not open and that they would refund our money,” explains Lucía, a Spanish woman who was already leaving the premises to go to Notre-Dame Cathedral. “Let’s see if they let us in.”
The strike threatens to create an even bigger problem if it continues into the Christmas period. The Minister of Culture tried to prevent it last week and met with the unions with the commitment not to implement the spending cut 5.7 million euros in public funding for the Louvre planned in the 2026 finance bill. But for the moment, no response has been received from the workers.
The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced a major reform of the museum a year ago to compensate for its deficiencies and improve access. The director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, the first woman to direct this institution in 230 years, had sent an explosive letter to the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, denouncing a panorama of extreme disrepair: leaks, poor conservation of works of art, deterioration of an “old” building and, above all, an unsatisfactory experience for visitors. The letter was a premonition of everything that would happen in the following months, but the reform is still unclear and how it will be financed.
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