Louvre Museum loses 40 mln euros over COVID-19

France's Louvre Museum is getting ready to reopen almost four months after COVID-19 forced it to close, but visitors will find one feature missing: the heaving crowd jostling to get a view of the "Mona Lisa," Report says, citing TASS.

The museum's director Jean-Luc Martinez said its sheer size - 45,000 square meters of galleries containing 30,000 works would reopen - means it will not be hard to respect physical distancing.

"It's not somewhere where you're going to be crushed up against each other," he said.

Before the outbreak, the Louvre had around 1 million visitors each month in the summer season. Three-quarters of them were foreign tourists.

Many visitors traditionally made a beeline for Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," often resulting in a crowd several people deep in front of it.

Martinez said the COVID-19 lockdown had cost about 40 million euros ($45 million) in lost ticket office revenue, canceled events, and shop sales.