CNN style Arts | Bereft of visitors, the Louvre keeps busy with major refit and restorations

As the world’s most visited museum awakens, escalators that once carried up to 40,000 pairs of feet a day loop quietly through the empty lobby.

Lockdown restrictions shuttered the Louvre in late October, leaving world-famous artworks like “Venus de Milo,” “Liberty Leading the People” and the “Mona Lisa” without their usual crowds of admirers.

But they’re not completely alone — the museum is making the most of the closures by carrying out long-planned renovations.

“(The Louvre) is still living, even though it seems really asleep from the outside,” says project manager Gautier Moysset, standing in front of a set of 19th-century doors that once opened onto the bedchamber of French kings.  –read more—