{"id":179693,"date":"2025-12-07T17:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/179693\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T17:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:59:07","slug":"water-leak-in-the-louvre-damages-hundreds-of-works-museum-says-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/179693\/","title":{"rendered":"Water leak in the Louvre damages hundreds of works, museum says | Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

A water leak in late November damaged several hundred works in the Louvre\u2019s Egyptian department, the Paris<\/a> museum said on Sunday, weeks after a brazen jewel theft raised concerns over its infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween 300 and 400 works\u201d were affected by the leak discovered on 26 November, the museum\u2019s deputy administrator, Francis Steinbock, said, describing them as \u201cEgyptology journals\u201d and \u201cscientific documentation\u201d used by researchers.<\/p>\n

The damaged items dated from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were \u201cextremely useful\u201d but \u201cby no means unique\u201d, Steinbock added.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo heritage artefacts have been affected by this damage,\u201d he said. \u201cAt this stage, we have no irreparable and definitive losses in these collections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The incident comes after a theft in October in which a four-person gang raided the world\u2019s most-visited art museum in broad daylight, stealing jewellery worth an estimated $102m (\u00a376.5m) in just seven minutes before escaping. It led to a debate over the museum\u2019s ageing infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The Louvre said there would be an internal investigation into the November leak, which was caused by the accidental opening of a valve in the heating and ventilation system that led to water seeping through the ceiling of the Mollien wing, where the books were stored.<\/p>\n

The \u201ccompletely obsolete\u201d system had been shut down for months and was due to be replaced from September 2026, the museum administrator added.<\/p>\n

The works will \u201cbe dried, sent to a bookbinder to be restored, and then returned to the shelves\u201d, Steinbock said.<\/p>\n

In late November, the Louvre said it would raise ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, meaning US, British and Chinese tourists, among others, will have to pay \u20ac32 (\u00a328) to get in.<\/p>\n

The museum said the 45% price hike aimed to boost annual revenues by up to $23m to fund structural improvements.<\/p>\n

The Louvre welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024, 69% from abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A water leak in late November damaged several hundred works in the Louvre\u2019s Egyptian department, the Paris museum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-179693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}