LOUVRE LENS

Faithful to its aim of bringing its works to an ever-wider public, the Louvre Museum is opening a new chapter of its history by setting up in Lens. The Louvre-Lens site is a former mine-head taken over by vegetation. It is both park and museum, a place for walking and enjoying life, a place dedicated to culture and discovery. Installed within a deliberately contemporary architecture of glass and metal, the Galerie du Temps will exhibit 205 works, chronologically displayed. Over a 120-metre long display, from the birth of writing in around 3,500 BC up to the mid-nineteenth century, all civilisations and techniques are represented. The Galerie du Temps presents masterpieces from three major periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times. This unique exhibition space offers a means of juxtaposing works produced by different civilisations and cultures, but created at the same moment in history.