Laurence des Vehicles, director of the Louvre Museum, is photographed earlier than a listening to of the Senate tradition committee, three days after jewels had been stolen in a daring daylight heist, in Paris, Oct. 22, 2025.
Emma Da Silva/AP
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Emma Da Silva/AP
Laurence des Vehicles stop after a punishing yr for the previous royal palace — the high-profile jewels heist from the Apollo Gallery, a mid-February burst pipe close to the “Mona Lisa,” water leaks damaging priceless books, workers walkouts and a wildcat strike over overcrowding and understaffing.
The landmark has confronted a widening narrative of an establishment spiraling uncontrolled.
And that strain deepened in latest weeks when French authorities revealed a suspected decadelong ticket fraud operation linked to the museum that investigators say could have price the Louvre 10 million euros ($11.8 million).
President Emmanuel Macron accepted des Vehicles’ resignation as “an act of accountability” at a second when the Louvre wants “calm” and new momentum for safety upgrades, modernization and different main initiatives, in line with an announcement from his workplace.
Macron desires to present des Vehicles a brand new mission throughout France’s presidency of the Group of Seven main industrialized nations, centered on cooperation amongst main museums, the assertion mentioned.
For a lot of in France’s cultural world, the resignation solutions months of head-scratching over why no high official had fallen after the heist: a daylight theft that many within the nation noticed as essentially the most humiliating breach of French heritage safety in residing reminiscence.
It additionally got here as lawmakers and cultural officers widened scrutiny of the museum’s management and safety practices within the months because the breach.
Folks line up exterior the Louvre Museum, in Paris, Feb. 13.
Michel Euler/AP
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Michel Euler/AP
Brazen theft
Thieves took lower than eight minutes in October to steal crown jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the Louvre, in a weekend operation that surprised guests, uncovered obvious vulnerabilities and left one in all France’s most symbolically charged collections in legal palms.
A number of suspects had been later arrested, however the stolen items stay lacking.
Des Vehicles, one of the crucial distinguished museum administrators in Europe, had provided to resign on the day of the theft, nevertheless it was initially refused by the tradition minister.
In remarks after the theft, she described the second as a “tragic, brutal, violent actuality” for the Louvre and mentioned that, because the particular person in cost, it had felt proper to supply her resignation.
Lightning rod
In an interview revealed on Tuesday by day by day newspaper Le Figaro, des Vehicles mentioned that she had tried to steer the Louvre by way of the fallout from the heist, however had concluded that she may now not perform the museum’s transformation within the present institutional local weather.
Staying on, she mentioned, would have meant managing the established order when the museum nonetheless wants deep reform.
“I used to be there to take the lightning” as museum director, she mentioned.
Des Vehicles additionally mentioned that the October break-in uncovered issues that she had been warning about since taking workplace, together with getting old infrastructure, out of date technical programs and extreme congestion.
She had led the Louvre since 2021, taking on one of many museum world’s most prestigious jobs because the establishment emerged from the coronavirus pandemic and mass tourism returned.
Multifaceted disaster
In June, a wildcat strike by front-of-house workers and safety staff pressured the Louvre to halt operations, stranding hundreds of tourists exterior the glass pyramid and underscoring the depth of anger amongst staff over overcrowding, understaffing and what unions referred to as untenable working circumstances.
Staff mentioned that the strain of day by day customer flows — notably across the “Mona Lisa” — had change into unmanageable and that promised reforms had been arriving too slowly. There have been rising complaints that the infrastructure and staffing of the crumbling medieval construction have not stored tempo with the crowds pouring by way of its galleries.
The resignation got here at an particularly punishing second, lower than two weeks after French authorities revealed the separate ticket fraud scheme.
That case widened scrutiny past the jewels theft and towards the museum’s day-to-day controls.
Fraud scheme
Prosecutors say tour guides are suspected of — as much as 20 occasions a day — reusing the identical tickets to usher in completely different customer teams, at occasions allegedly with the assistance of Louvre staff, in a system investigators consider operated for a decade.
In a uncommon interview simply days in the past with The Related Press after the fraud case was made public, the Louvre’s No. 2, basic administrator Kim Pham, mentioned that fraud at an establishment the scale of the Louvre was “statistically inevitable.”
He argued that the museum’s sheer scale — tens of millions of tourists, a number of checkpoints and a sprawling historic advanced — makes it uniquely uncovered.
However he additionally acknowledged shortcomings, and mentioned that the museum had tightened validation checks and elevated controls.
New Renaissance
The succession of crises has put new political weight on a challenge Macron has closely championed: the Louvre’s sweeping overhaul plan, branded the “Louvre New Renaissance.”
Unveiled by Macron in January 2025, the renovation, which may take as much as a many years, goals to modernize a museum extensively seen as overstretched and bodily worn down by mass tourism.
The plan features a new entrance close to the Seine River to ease strain on I.M. Pei’s pyramid, new underground areas and a devoted room for the “Mona Lisa” with timed entry — all supposed to enhance crowd stream and scale back the day by day crush that has change into a logo of the Louvre’s success and its dysfunction.
The challenge is anticipated to price roughly 700 million-800 million euros ($826 million-$944 million), with funding from ticket income, state assist, donations and Louvre Abu Dhabi-related revenue.
The size and price of that plan now loom over the seek for des Vehicles’ successor.
Macron has framed the overhaul as a nationwide precedence, evaluating its ambition to different landmark French restoration efforts and casting it as a part of a broader protection of French cultural status.
