The Louvre to Unveil 1500 Works on New Website

Now here's something to mark your cyber-calendar for.....I can hardly wait.

The Louvre, once the palace of France's kings and today the largest museum in the world, will unveil a revamped, state-of-the-art website next week, the museum announced.

The existing site, a model of innovation at its inception in 1995, will be replaced "to offer the public a new tool for the dispersion of culture and news," a press release said.

Initially in French and English, the new site (www.louvre.fr) will add other languages over time, beginning with Japanese.

Evolving technologies and expanding broadband access to the Internet have made it possible to enrich both the content and the presentation on the new site, which will feature an interactive 3-D map of the museum, detailed information of 1500 major works and a multimedia history of the museum itself.

Besides "permanent exhibits," the site will also contain special presentations on particular periods and exhibits "adapted to different publics," the statement said, including children, professionals, journalists, teachers and the disabled.

Additional features will come online before the end of the month: more profiles of selected works, personalized online services, a special site just for children, online ticketing, and even information on guided tours using mobile phones.

The price tag for the retooled website was seven million euros (8.56 million dollars), contributed by French bank Credit Lyonnais (4 million euros), technology firm Accenture (1.6 million euros), and Blue Martini Sofware (1.3 million euros).

The Louvre houses more than 34,000 art works over 60,000 square meters and attracts some six million visitors annually.