Wired
Summary
The Louvre, one of the greatest art museums in the world—home to the Mona Lisa—has an uneasy relationship with its neighbor, the River Seine. In 2016, the Louvre’s curators rushed to relocate priceless artworks after the Seine, which flows through Paris, breached its banks in a flood. That’s far from the only time floodwaters exacerbated by climate change have threatened the museum. It happened again, for example, in 2018.
But the Louvre also depends on the Seine. For the fickle river helps the museum maintain cool temperatures and humidity levels conducive to the long-term preservation of centuries-old art. It’s possible thanks to a sprawling network of pipes, pumps, and cooling machines that connect to the Seine. Hundreds of Parisian buildings rely on this network—but none more than the Louvre.
“For the district cooling, it’s the biggest client that we have,” says Raphaëlle Nayral, secretary general of Fraîcheur de Paris, the company that runs the cooling system. An average-size office building draws about half a megawatt of cooling power, whereas the Louvre soaks up 12 megawatts, Nayral explains.
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