Last month, a water pipe at the Musée de Louvre rained unexpectedly on scores of archival documents relating to Egyptian history. The Parisian museum’s latest misfortune has marked a breaking point. Today, employees announced their plans to strike.

Didier Rykner, a French art historian who keeps an eye on the Louvre, broke news of the flood last Friday in his online magazine La Tribune de l’Arte. On November 26, a pipe in the building’s heating and ventilation system malfunctioned above a research room in the museum’s Mollien Pavilion. Water drenched hundreds of journals, books, and documents, sinking into the carpet and permeating the next floor down, which has an electrical cabinet, posing a fire risk. Nearby offices were out of commission. According to Rykner, a second, smaller leak took place days later, without dealing further damage.

On Sunday, the Louvre’s Deputy General Administrator Francis Steinbock spoke to the French news network BFM TV about the mishap. Steinbock said 300 to 400 documents had been damaged. He assured the public that none of these materials, which serve as active resources for curators, count as ancient “heritage artifacts”—they predominantly date back to the 19th and 20th centuries. He also emphasized that no works of art had been affected, and that none of the waterlogged relics appear to be irreparably damaged.

Dehumidifiers were already whirring, airing the library out. The Agence France-Presse reported that once the damaged books are dry, officials from the Louvre will send them to bookbinders for further conservation.

Rykner pointed out that the institution’s staff has been aware of the faulty pipes for quite some time. According to his sources, this isn’t the first time they’ve leaked. In fact, earlier this year, a memo from the Louvre’s director Laurence des Cars to France’s culture minister revealed that the museum’s buildings were in “poor condition” and “no longer water tight.” Just days later, the French state announced a multimillion-dollar renovation of the Louvre, including the construction of a custom-built room for the Mona Lisa.

The pipe system, meanwhile, was scheduled for repairs in September 2026. The Louvre declined to offer further comment regarding whether those repairs might now be expedited.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron gives a speech in front of the Mona Lisa by Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 28, 2025. Photo: Bertrand Guay/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

It’s been a rough autumn for the Louvre, which made headlines around the world in October when a band of thieves stole $102 million worth of jewels in broad daylight. Then, on November 17, museum officials shuttered a gallery and several offices upon learning that they are structurally unsound. The Louvre, which opened 232 years ago, raised ticket rates last month to fund renovations on their failing facilities, though many have questioned whether they’re allocating resources effectively.

After learning of the latest calamity this weekend, the CFDT, France’s second-largest trade union, took to LinkedIn to decry the ongoing state of deterioration at the museums—in terms of both safety and dialogue. Louvre staff held a union meeting today. Now, a coalition consisting of the CGT, CFDT, and Sud unions have alerted the country’s Ministry of Culture that 200 workers voted unanimously to start a rolling strike next Monday, just shy of six months since gallery attendants, ticket agents, and security personnel shuttered the museum with a spontaneous walkout.

Louvre staff “feel today like they are the last bastion before collapse,” reads the coalition’s letter, which is pointedly addressed to France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati rather than des Cars. In addition to renovations, it is demanding 200 new employees, CGT union representative Christian Galani told the AFP, restoring the museum’s 2,100-person workforce to levels last seen in 2014. The French senate is set to discuss the results of their preliminary investigation into the Louvre robbery on Wednesday.