The Louvre, perhaps France's most famous museum, has announced, as part of a $1 billion renovation, that the famed Leonardo painting will have its own exhibition space, 33,000 square foot large and separate from the rest of the museum. In addition, the room will have information about perhaps the world's most famous painting, including its history.

The Mona Lisa is also known as La Gioconda because it is presumed to be a painting of a woman named Lisa del Giocondo. Leonardo worked on this painting while he was in the middle of other projects, from 1503 to 1506. Thereafter, he took the painting with him wherever he went and worked on it in fits and starts until his death, in 1517.

King Francis I took possession of the painting, and it has been on display in the Louvre since 1797 (four years after it opened). With few exceptions, it has stayed there. Museum officials lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, in 1963, and to museums in Moscow (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts) and Tokyo (National Museum), in 1974. The painting was famously stolen in 1911 and returned unharmed after a fierce worldwide search.

Museum figures show that about 20,000 people a day come to look at the famed painting, one of a large handful of masterpieces by the famous Renaissance polymath. Museum officials hope that having the Mona Lisa in its own room will help ease congestion elsewhere in the museum. In 2022, the Louvre decided that the daily maximum was 30,000 people. Museum officials hope that the addition will enable them to accept more than 3 million new visitors annually.

A team of American, French, and German architects designed the renovation, which centers on the Grande Colonnade, on the east side of massive museum. Reports are that the expansion will be finished in 2031.