Monday, April 1, 2002		Article

PARIS'S Louvre is revamping its Website so art lovers can view its entire collection, including thousands of drawings unseen by museum visitors, without ever setting foot in France.

The Louvre Web site already displays some of the museum's exhibits and gets six million visits a year, as many as flock to the French capital to see Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and other famous works up close.

All 35,000 of its exhibits will be on show at the revamped site announced on Friday. Directors hope the upgrade will give more people across the globe access to the world's biggest museum.

Online visitors will also be able to see a further 130,000 drawings, which are too fragile for public display and can only be seen by appointment.

From next year visitors to the site, almost half of whom are currently North Americans, will be able to see the huge collection in a virtual, three-dimensional tour of the museum's galleries.

"This way the entire Louvre collection will be accessible to everyone," Internet Director Catherine Jaques told Reuters after a presentation of the site, adding the plan was to make the Louvre ""the world's biggest virtual museum."

The 1,65,000 works will be online by 2003, before the museum launches the second phase of the revamp, aimed at enabling Websurfers to create their own personalised Louvre Internet service, Jaques told Reuters.

"It will be a case of 'My Louvre' -- so if somebody is a big Mona Lisa fan they will receive information about the Mona Lisa," she said. And those who make it to France's most visited cultural site will eventually be able to immortalise their visit by downloading information from portable audioguides onto handheld computers or third generation mobile telephones.

Museum chiefs hope the new site will push hits up to between 10 and 15 million per year by 2010.

It can be found at www.louvre.fr.