Paris' Louvre: Visitors locked out as museum staff refused to work over coronavirus fears

LOCKED OUT: People line up at the Louvre Museum as the staff refused to work and closed the museum over staff safety amidst the rising number of coronavirus cases in France, on Sunday March 1, 2020. The museum is the world's most visited, with up to 15,000 visitors daily.

SERPENTINE QUEUES: Long lines of disgruntled tourists on Sunday snaked outside Paris' Louvre museum, the home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa portrait and the Venus de Milo sculpture. The Department of France’s Louvre Museum later on Sunday decided to keep the museum closed over fears of the spread of coronavirus. Earlier on Sunday, the museum shut down all of the sodden after its staff refused to work, fearing of being contaminated by the flow of visitors from around the world.

WAITING FOR NOTHING: Thousands of visitors lined up under rain in front of the main entrance of the museum waiting to enter the museum. They waited until afternoon to get inside but they were then told that the museum will remain closed.

MOST VISITED MUSEUM: Louvre in Paris is the world’s most-visited museum. The staff held a meeting on Sunday (March 1, 2020) about the coronavirus outbreak, leaving hundreds locked out. The decision to close the museum for the day was made after a staff meeting about virus prevention efforts stopped the museum from opening as scheduled on Sunday morning.

HOME OF THE MONA LISA: The shutdown on Sunday (March 1, 2020) of the Paris Louvre museum followed a government decision Saturday to ban indoor public gatherings of more than 5,000 people. In this file photograph taken on October 7, 2019, visitors take photographs in front of The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) after it was returned to its place at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The Louvre in Paris is putting the finishing touches to an ambitious Leonardo da Vinci retrospective opening on October 24, 2019, which groups more than 160 of the artist's works and has already attracted close to 200,000 advance visitor bookings. Timed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the famed artist's death, the show, simply called "Leonardo da Vinci", took a decade to put together and includes works on loan from Queen Elizabeth and Bill Gates.

VENUS DE MILO: The museum usually receives about 15,000 visitors daily from France and beyond. This is a world-famous sculpture in the Louvre museum, in central Paris. The French government issued the orders on Saturday as it tries to contain the spread of the virus. As of Saturday evening, France had 100 confirmed cases of the disease.

MUSIC VIDEO WITH MONA LISA: A music video by Beyonce and Jay Z set in the Louvre Paris helped boost visitor numbers to a record 10.2 million in 2018, the most for any museum in history, the Louvre said on January 3, 2019.

ISLAMIC GALLERIES IN THE LOUVRE PARIS: The Islamic Galleries in the Louvre in Paris. This section, built in 2012, is two underground floors with a golden, undulating roof known as the “veil,” which allows in filtered light and creates a restful, contemplative space

ORNATE ROOM: Napoleon III Apartments in the Richelieu Wing of the Louvre in Paris. The former chambers of Napoleon III span several rooms of the Richelieu Wing, built by architects Louis Visconti and Hector LeFeul in the 1850s. Photo: NYT

THE MAIN PYRAMID: This serves as the entrance to the Louvre Museum. In Paris, when you walk on the right bank of the River Seine in the first arrondissement, it is hard to miss a landmark that has come to define the city of eternal love. Louvre.