Louvre-Lens

The Louvre opened this outpost in 2012 on the site of a disused coal mine in Lens, a town hit hard by the industry's collapse, as a deliberate act of cultural decentralisation. SANAA designed a low building of aluminium and glass laid along the ground rather than rising from it, with walls that reflect the surroundings. The main gallery, the Galerie du Temps, breaks with normal museum practice: rather than dividing by civilisation, it lays around two hundred works from the Louvre in a single continuous line from 3500 BC to 1850, so Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Renaissance Europe stand in one timeline. Works rotate periodically.

History

In 2003, in answer to criticism that French art and culture were too concentrated in Paris, the Ministry of Culture and the Louvre planned a satellite museum in the regions; only Nord-Pas-de-Calais applied, proposing six towns, and in 2004 Lens was chosen, partly in the hope of reviving a mining town whose last pit had closed in 1986 and which had suffered disasters such as the Courrières mine explosion of 1906, the worst in European history. Officials looked to the "Bilbao effect" of the Guggenheim, though some locals found the project patronising. The design competition was won by the Japanese firm SANAA with Imrey Culbert, the landscape architect Catherine Mosbach and Studio Adrien Gardère, and the building, SANAA's first in France, received the Équerre d'Argent prize for 2013 (Wikipedia, Louvre-Lens).

What you'll find

• The Galerie du Temps - one room, one timeline, all civilisations together.
• The SANAA building - low reflective pavilions on a former colliery.
• The rotating loans - Louvre works exchanged periodically.
• The mining park - the reclaimed pit landscape around the museum.

When to go

Year-round; the permanent gallery is free, which is unusual for a museum of this standing. It closes on Tuesdays. Temporary exhibitions are ticketed separately.

Good to know

The collection rotates, so a specific work may not be present. Lens is an industrial town with limited other draw. The building's reflective surfaces make photography awkward.

Nearby

Arras lies southwest; Lille is north.

Key facts