Even in light of the string of problems that have beset the Louvre since last October, last week stands out as a particularly bad one for the museum.
On Thursday (12 February), the Paris prosecution office revealed it was investigating an alleged €10m, decade-long ticket fraud scheme at the Parisian museum. The same day, a water leak damaged a 19th-century canvas on the ceiling of the Italian paintings’ gallery. Today (16 February), unions have called for another staff walk out, in protest against “worsening” security and working conditions. It would continue what has already become the longest period of strikes in the museum’s history.
Nine people were arrested on Tuesday (10 February) over an alleged scheme involving reused and counterfeit tickets, according to the daily newspaper Le Parisien. Those detained included tour guides and two museum employees.
The prosecution office confirmed that those arrested were charged with gang fraud, one of them being placed in pre-trial detention. According to the office, guides involved in the scam would use the same tickets multiple times to sneak visitors in. Investigators believe that members of the network may have brought up to 20 tourist groups into the museum each day over the past ten years using reused tickets. The office has estimated loss to the Louvre at €10m.
French police say they have seized €957,000 in cash and €486,000 from bank accounts. Part of the scam’s profits was also reportedly reinvested in Dubai.
The prosecutors said that the arrest followed a complaint that the Louvre filed in December 2024. The museum has yet to release a statement, however in response to a request from The Art Newspaper, a Louvre spokesperson said that the police operation is part of an active plan to combat “intensifying and diversifying ticket fraud”.
The Louvre is the most visited museum is the world—welcoming up to 30,000 visitors a day. According to official figures, in 2023, the illegal re-sale of free passes alone amounted to €4m. In 2024, stolen bank data and fake websites caused the loss of another €2m.
Concerns over maintenance
On Friday, the museum also announced that a leak from a central heating tube had damaged a painting located in a ceiling of the Italian paintings gallery. There were two rips found in The triumph of French painting (1822) by Charles Meynier, which depicts the French painters Nicolas Poussin Charles Le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur, and the ceiling’s paint layer had lifted. The museum says that other works displayed in the gallery, including paintings by Fra Angelico and Bernardino Luini, were safe and the room was reopened in the afternoon.
The leak adds to concerns about the physical state of the museum. Last November, the rupture of a corroded heating pipe caused a flood in the library of the Egyptian Department, damaging 400 documents. And the ten-room Greek ceramics gallery remains closed because ceiling beams are in danger of collapsing.
For months, the unions have been protesting against what they say is the museum’s lack of attention to “technical failures and the building’s ageing condition”. They have renewed their calls for the Louvre to abandon a grandiose €666m plan for a new entrance and a subterranean complex around the Mona Lisa, in order to “focus on basic maintenance and restoration”.
The museum has come under criticism for the proposed extension, with French media pointing to the fact that it was launched before any technical study had been undertaken, especially on the risks of flooding under the banks of the Seine.
On Wednesday 11 February, the selection of an architect for the proposed extension was indefinitely suspended by the Paris prefect. The museum said it needed instead “to proceed with technical studies”.
The postponement has also been linked by official sources to the imminent departure of culture minister Rachida Dati, who is a candidate in next month’s Paris mayoral election—as well as uncertainties regarding the future of the Louvre director Laurence des Cars.
Calls for Des Cars’ resignation, including from senators close to Dati, have mounted in the wake of an unprecedented series of scandals at the museum and the theft of the French crown jewels last October.
