WHEN the late François Mitterrand commissioned an enormous glass pyramid in the heart of the Louvre in 1989, critics slammed the new entrance as a ghoulish eyesore and the Socialist president as a would-be pharaoh “wanting to breathe the scent of immortality”. An unrepentant Mitterrand called it one of the proudest achievements of his 14-year rule.
Seventeen years on, the pyramid is again causing aggravation. Its underground atrium can no longer cope with a record 7.5m visitors a year and the museum has been forced to recall its American architect, Ieoh Ming Pei, for a drastic rethink.
Even the 89-year-old Pei admits his most controversial creation is in bad form. “I was surprised to find that it is all beginning to look like an airport, with ropes for people to line up to get a ticket and then again to get information,” he said this weekend after a recent visit. “People get jostled about. It’s not a pleasant place.”
The pyramid is a victim of its own success, and of the Louvre’s. Initially designed to welcome some 4m visitors a year, it was built as part of the so-called “Grand Louvre” project that doubled exhibition space by opening the northern wing of the former royal palace and created an underground shopping centre.
By the late 1990s the museum was drawing 5m visitors. The bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code and the subsequent film starring Tom Hanks have made the museum even more popular as visitors seek out the Grand Gallery where the fictional curator is shot dead in the book’s opening scene.
Surveys show the pyramid itself is the third most popular work in the Louvre — behind the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo statue — far ahead of the museum’s 300,000 other works of art spanning 9,000 years of civilisation and including 52 works by Rubens and 12 Rembrandts. Two-thirds of visitors insist on entering through the pyramid, shunning two less-crowded entrances.
They face long queues in the main courtyard to get into the pyramid, before queueing again in the atrium below for tickets, at the cloakrooms and finally for entry to the main collections. In the summer, the pyramid’s glass panes ensure the sun beats down relentlessly.
The chaos can only get worse, with the number of visitors forecast to jump to 9m after 2010 as tourists from China, India and eastern Europe increasingly head for Paris.
Asked whether he and the Louvre had made a mistake in building the pyramid, Pei replied emphatically: “No, no. No one anticipated the increase in visitors and the fact that people prefer to come to the Louvre via the pyramid. They line up, rain or shine. I hadn’t anticipated the pyramid becoming an icon.”
Nor, he added, had anyone predicted the 9/11 attacks in New York, which spawned new security checks as far away as Paris, slowing access.
Pei has spent several days this summer pacing backwards and forwards below the pyramid as well as across several miles of the museum’s galleries to find a solution. “The root problem is the ticketing and the information desk. Many tourists are first-timers and they need an awful lot of direction,” he said.
The Louvre also refuses to admit the pyramid was a mistake. “We’re not making emergency repairs, we’re anticipating future growth in the number of visitors,” said Didier Selles, the museum’s chief executive director.
“We’re going to improve access under the pyramid and make it a place of contemplation.” he said. Work on the £48m remodelling is scheduled for 2009-12.
Pei, who is due to brief a delegation from the Louvre in New York next month, hopes the pyramid will become more like he designed it: “I’d like it to revert to the original plan, a place where people meet and talk.”
Possible changes include moving ticket booths to an empty storage area, as well as shifting the Grand Louvre restaurant and the museum bookshop.
“I was frank with the Louvre, I told them I would find a solution but they will have to make the solution work. I don’t think I can ensure that things are done as I want them done,” said Pei.
