The Gallery of the Five Continents, at the Louvre in Paris, November 2025. AUDREY VIGER/2025 MUSÉE DU LOUVRE
It is an often-forgotten yet striking entrance, flanked by grand banded columns and two rows of feline sculptures, located on Quai François-Mitterrand at the edge of the Tuileries Garden. Until it closed at the end of 2024, few Louvre visitors used the Porte des Lions entrance, which offered direct access to the Spanish and Italian art rooms upstairs and to the Pavillon des Sessions on the ground floor, home to about 100 works from Africa, the Americas and Oceania on loan from the Musée du Quai Branly.
The reopening of this space, now renamed the "Gallery of the Five Continents," on Wednesday, December 3, is meant to be a carefully staged charm operation of the kind the Louvre specializes in. It allows museum president Laurence des Cars to reaffirm the museum's universal mission and validate her decisions and vision, with less than a year left in her tenure.
The unveiling of a commissioned work by Dutch-South African artist Marlene Dumas – a series of portraits displayed at the entrance to the gallery – is also meant to usher the former royal palace into the 21st century. And it demonstrates the museum's ability to attract private funding – longtime donor Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière contributed €2 million to the project.
