Visit a world-class arts centre:

A homage to the industrial past

The Louvre-Lens Museum is built on the site of an old mine, operational from 1884 – 1916, in an area once home to a thriving coal mine industry. Since the closure of the last mine in 1990, Lens has undergone a period of economic hardship; opening a regional branch of the Louvre here has injected a new vitality, as has the UNESCO world heritage status awarded to the imperious slag heaps that pepper the landscape.
The Louvre-Lens museum is a single storey building, reaching 6m at its highest point, there are no steps. An extraordinary underground space is home to the restoration and storage area with glass walls, so you can see behind the scenes. The rows of paintings, tapestries and sculptures are an eerie and strangely thrilling sight.

A museum on a human scale

This is no fusty museum but a spectacular space in which visitors are given the means to better understand and interpret great works of art.