Brits and other non-EU tourists visiting the Louvre in France will soon have to cough up a higher entry fee. The extra cash will be used to fund a dedicated room for the iconic Mona Lisa painting and a new entrance.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced the new levy for non-EU citizens on Tuesday, following reports of overcrowding, leaks, and outdated facilities at the world-renowned museum. The increased fee is part of a fundraising effort to revamp the attraction, which staff have described as being in a ‘deplorable state of disrepair’.
While Macron did not reveal how much the renovation would cost, he insisted it would not effect the taxpayer as he set out his plans in front of the Mona Lisa. Instead, it’s expected that resources from the Elysee, sponsors and heightened tourist tickets will finance the project.
The Louvre’s current entry fee is €22 (£18.45), but a new price for tourists is expected to kick in from January 1, 2026. This comes after admission prices were already hiked from €17 to €22 euros in 2024, according to Sortir à Paris. It is unclear what the new fee will be.
Plans outline that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa will be relocated to a ‘special area’ of the Louvre, ‘accessible independently from the rest of the museum and for this reason endowed with its own access pass’.
A ‘grand entrance’ will also be opened at the building’s eastern side, opposite the Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois de Paris church. The president is aiming for the project to be complete by 2031.
As per a Reuters report, Macron said: “While Notre Dame was the architectural catalyst of our craftsmanship, this project for the Louvre must be for art, art history and its transmission a new step in the life of the nation.”
The prospective new levy deals is yet another blow to the UK, as Spain announced further taxes to Brits and non-EU nationals hoping to buy second homes there. Earlier in January, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez laid out the ‘unprecedented’ measures aimed at curtailing property acquisitions by British non-residents.
This initiative comes in the wake of an intensifying housing crisis in Spain, which has instigated a series of anti-tourism demonstrations throughout the nation. “For non-resident non-EU nationals the tax burden will be up to 100 percent of the property’s value,” he said in a recent address, according to the Express.
“In 2023 alone non-residents from outside the EU purchased 27,000 houses and flats, not to live in them because mainly they bought them to speculate, to earn money with them, which is something that in the context of the problems many people are experiencing is something we can’t permit.”
Musée du Louvre has declined to comment.