Iconic Louvre museum opens huge outpost to protect art from flooding

The Louvre has opened a new sprawling art conservation centre Tuesday which is situated some 200 Kilometres from Paris, to protect the museum's priceless artworks from its flood-prone storage reserves.

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New Conservation Centre opened

The Louvre Conservation Center in Lievin, northern France, will help protect the valuable art items from the swelling French River of Sienne as major floods grow more frequent and the museum finds itself lacking in safe storage space. The tweet in English for the inauguration of conservation centre reads as- Inauguration of the conservation centre @ MuseeLouvre which will house 250,000 works # Lievin in the extension of @ MuseeLouvreLens which together constitute one of the most important cultural centres of Europe. 

The conservation centre will protect even those museum works as well which are out of public view in the former palace. The Louvre museum has shown urgency and has taken on additional measures in recent years after severe floods in 2016 and 2018 forced the Louvre to rescue endangered artworks from basements and to close exhibits. The new outpost will be the part of the museum's flood risk prevention plan which came to light in 2002 at the recommendation of Paris Police.

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About the conservation centre

Reports suggest that officials are boasting that the newly-constructed Lievin site which is a short distance from Museum's other outpost  'The Louvre-Lens' will be able to store around 250,000 works of art within 5 years. Half of the building's extra space will be dedicated to art from Louvre which is the world's biggest museum. The centre shall hold workrooms, study halls and a photo studio which shall be used for research and conservation. The centre will also have enough space to store foreign artworks extracted from conflict zones at their home countries' request as per officials. 

(With inputs from AP) 

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