Abu Dhabi has finally announced the opening date of the much-anticipated Louvre museum in the capital of the UAE.
The doors of the ambitious cultural institution at Manarat Saadiyat will open on November 11, and we are all extremely excited!
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed personally took to Twitter to announce the opening date.
" #Louvre_AbuDhabi reflects the UAE's approach towards cultural connectivity & its pursuit to become a beacon of knowledge & tolerance"
"Abu Dhabi has put its hand on its heart and said that the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s messages are ones that it wants to send to the rest of the world: messages of unity, acceptance, connectivity and tolerance. These were messages that were important 1,000 years ago but are even more important today and Abu Dhabi is the beacon that will broadcast these messages to the Arab world and to the rest of the world," Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA) told The National.
Here are 12 things about Louvre Abu Dhabi you should know:
1. The intergovernmental agreement between Abu Dhabi and France to build the museum was signed 10 years, 8 months and 250 days ago!
2. The architect, Jean Nouvel, has previously been awarded the Pritzker Prize, a top recognition in the field of architecture.
Inspired by low-lying Arab settlements, Nouvel applied a contextual approach to the site, designing the Louvre Abu Dhabi as a ‘museum city’ in the sea with its contrasting series of 55 white buildings.
3. The museum will have almost 700 exhibits on display!
Approximately half of the exhibits will belong to the museum’s permanent collection, while the other half will consist of loans from 13 major French cultural institutions including the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Orsay and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The loans will include Monet’s La Gare Saint-Lazare, a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, and Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic La Belle Ferronniére, which will leave Europe for the first time to become the first painting by the Renaissance polymath to be exhibited in the Middle East.
4. The diameter of the dome's base is 180 meters, and 36 meters above ground!
5. Louvre Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island is 40 meters above sea level.
6. The dome weighs 7,500 tonnes, the same as the Eiffel Tower in Paris...
7. The museum's exterior is a complex geometric structure of 7,850 stars.
The stars are repeated at various sizes and angles in eight different layers.
As the sun passes above, its light filters through the perforations in the dome to create an inspiring effect within the museum.
This is known as the 'Rain Of Light'. The largest star is 13 meters in diameter and weighs 1.3 tonnes!
8. The 97,000-square-meter Louvre will include 23 permanent galleries in 12 sequences.
9. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will have its own children's museum, 200-seater-auditorium, a restaurant, café, and retail space.
10. Louvre AD is only one of three planned museums on Saadiyat Island.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is only the first of three museums planned to be built on Saadiyat Island and will be followed by the openings of the Zayed National Museum and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.