The Louvre Museum has made its entire collection of art available for online users free of charge.
The complete database can be accessed on tablets and computers, but it’s optimized to work best on smartphones. Visitors of the site can explore through simple or advanced researches, entries by each curatorial department and even themed albums, as well as by following the interactive map that will guide them room by room, available in French, English, Spanish and Chinese.
The new Collections database is comprised of 482,000 works from the French museum, the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, the Tuileries and Carrousel gardens sculptures, plus “MNR” (Musées Nationaux Récupération, or National Museums Recovery) pieces that were found after World War II and were handed over to the Louvre until they can be returned to the real owners.
“Today, the Louvre is dusting off its treasures, even the least-known,” Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, said in a statement. “For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage. The Louvre’s stunning cultural heritage is all now just a click away! I am sure that this digital content is going to further inspire people to come to the Louvre to discover the collections in person.”
The database can be found on the official Louvre Collections website.