Renewing a two-hundred-year-old tradition

Since the Louvre was founded in 1793, it has been a national museum whose collections and skills are available to the Nation as a whole. In the early 19^th century, Chaptal was already writing of the museum's "sacred task," its duty to reach out to the regions beyond Paris.

In 2003, the Louvre launched a brand-new project with the aim of renewing this two-hundred-year-old tradition. Rather than simply lending out works or staff with specialist knowledge and skills, it would create a new branch of the museum, where everything would be planned and built from scratch.

Choosing the site: Lens

Six towns and cities in northern France put forward proposals to host the new museum. The winner was Lens, in the heart of the former mining country in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The Louvre-Lens will be built in France's most recently created administrative region, which is also one of its most vibrant in cultural terms.

The decision to build the new museum in Lens is an excellent opportunity to renew the identity of a region that has been strongly marked by industrial and social crisis. More than just a cultural highlight, the Louvre-Lens will be a key factor in future urban, economic, and social development for the whole region.

A new style of museum

The Louvre-Lens will be more than just an annex of the Louvre: it will be the Louvre itself, with its own departments and a full range of artistic, social, and educational programmes and activities. The works will be presented in new and innovative ways, giving them new meaning and making them more culturally accessible.

One of the museum's objectives will be teaching the public how to look at art. Works will be presented in an educational context which will draw heavily on the latest information and communication technologies. To make the works easier to understand, the collections will be displayed transversally, reaching beyond the limits of the traditional museum departments, thus giving visitors a new understanding of the works.

An architecture of glass and light

Over 120 architectural practices from all over the world put forward design proposals. The winning design, chosen in September 2005, was by the Japanese agency Sanaa, in association with the American museum architects Imrey/Culbert and the French landscape designer Catherine Mosbach. Sanaa produced a resolutely modern design of glass and light, easily accessible, close to the terrain and in harmony with the surrounding environment.

The 28,000 m² buildings will house the Louvre's collections, with over 6,000 m² for temporary exhibitions.

Major support from the local authorities

This ambitious project has been made possible thanks to major support from the local authorities and the European Union. The Nord-Pas de Calais region is both contractor and principal financial backer for the future museum, with support from other local authorities including the Pas-de-Calais département, the Lens-Liévin urban area, and Lens city council.

The Louvre-Lens project is a fine example of partnership involving local authorities, central government, and one of France's most emblematic publicly owned cultural institutions.