I’ll Take the Mona Lisa, and Some Fries With That

In a move that will have da Vinci, David, Ingres and Michelangelo rolling over in their graves, McDonald’s (“MacDo” en français) is opening a restaurant below the famous I.M. Pei pyramid at the Louvre. The branch au Louvre will be located directly next to the new ticketing area for the museum, meaning that tourists will see the golden arches before they see a single work of priceless art.  Despite a slew of protests in the nineties, led most notably by the activist farmer José Bové, who destroyed a McDonald’s in the town of Milau in 1999, the American chain seems to remain incredibly popular among the French. Though disdain is common, MacDo has 1,134 branches in the country. The Louvre restaurant will make it 1,135.

The American megachain is set to welcome its first customers next month, and workers at the iconic museum are horrified. Fears have been expressed, albeit anonymously, that the distinctive odor of McDonald’s French fries may waft upstairs, tempting art lovers to think about their stomachs when they should be contemplating Botticelli. But a spokesman for the Louvre told the London Telegraph that the owner of the McDonald’s franchise set to open in the museum “has taken the utmost care in ensuring the quality of the project, both in culinary and aesthetic terms.” No one will know for sure what that means until the restaurant doors open, but one can only hope the establishment will be a little classier than the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s in downtown Chicago.