ONE of the most enjoyable sights of Paris at present is the twice-monthly scaling of I.M. Pei's pyramid by the team of alpinistes employed to clean its sloping glass sides, which have so far proved resistant to mechanical nettoyage. This conversion of a functional failure into a pleasurable tourist experience epitomises both the elegance and refinement of Pei's design, and the whole-hearted determination of the French government to make a success of le Grand Louvre. 1.8 milliard francs (?180 million) have so far been spent - and this is only the beginning. 

The Pyramid is not so much a building as the transparent lid of an underground system of crowd control - and as such it works brilliantly. The guiding concept is that of a Metro station. Vast numbers of the public (an estimated 50,000 a day in the first few days) are sucked into its magic geometry, forced down a spiral ramp or the first of the many escalators (no lingering to admire the architecture is permitted at the top), and presented with something they can understand - an underground concourse (see p.512; Fig.79). Bewilderment there is, but of a familiar kind. After queuing for your ticket, you have to know, as in the Metro, the direction in which you intend to travel. The Louvre has been divided into three wings named after the three central pavillons of the Cour Napol"on - 'Richelieu' to the north (the ex-Ministry of Finance building), 'Sully' to the east (the Cour Carree), and 'Denon' to the south (the Grande Galerie and the Pavillon de Flore. These names beckon in gigantic letters from above three flights of moving staircases which whisk you out of the concourse once more. By now you will have your orientation guide, a designer leaflet which will equip you to follow the multi-plicity of signs (a la Vatican Museums) all over the walls. The rambling complexities of the Palais du Louvre have been reduced to a short logical sequence of numbered squares ('arrondissements'). Those who see order in the radial forms and criss-crossing tubes of Charles de Gaulle airport will easily weave their way here, though they may find themselves drawn constantly back by the centripetal pull of the Pyramid. 

But the Pyramid is only the translucent tip of a vast, as yet submerged, iceberg of re-organisation.* By 1995 le Grand Louvre will occupy the whole of the wing vacated by the Ministry of Finance, and eighty per cent of the collec-tions will have been re-located and re-installed. 'Richelieu' will house northern European painting, sculpture and works of art; 'Denon' will contain Italian painting and sculpture, oriental antiquities and an extended Cabinet des dessins; 'Sully' will group Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, with French painting running round all four sides of the Cour Carr(e at second-floor level. Not a single French painting will remain in the Grande Galerie. 

The first section of the French paintings galleries, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, is now in place (see p.512; Fig.80), and it is much to be hoped that this is not the shape of the Louvre to come. The rooms are at uneven levels, often low, inappropriately lit from side windows in addition to the dusty skylights (no alpinistes here), and have been re-converted in a bleak modernistic manner. Massive screens and room dividers are framed in the grey marmoreal stone that also paves the floors. There is not a moulding in sight. The wall coverings are coarse scrim, mostly painted in pallid colours. The paintings are hung low, marshalled in mechanical sequence, each label a regulation 55 centimetres from the floor. Marvellous though it is to see the large canvases and tapestry cartoons by Le Brun, Le Sueur, Philippe de Champaigne and Jouvenel brought out of store, they are barely squeezed in below the ceilings: it is hard to agree with the information boards that the Alexander paintings are hung 'comme le Brun avail sans doute pu le souhaiter'. In the first room, the fifteenth-century panels are enclosed in a series of climate-controlled telephone kiosks. 

Were it not for the informative labels and the excellent guides to each room printed on portable boards, it would be hard to believe that curators had been involved with this rebarbative 're-decoration': has the Louvre given itself over entirely into the hands of architects and designers? No doubt pre-existing constraints are partly to blame - the intractable rooms, the conversion begun in the 1960s. We can only hope that the architect responsible for the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rooms (Italo Rota) will not work in the out-dated idiom of Joseph-Andre Motte, and that more respect be paid in the future both to the historic container and to the individual needs of the paintings. This is not the place to open the question of whether an installation of European art rigidly ordered by traditional departments and national schools will seem appropriate to the twenty-first century. 

When the scheme is complete, the Pyramid will be accessible below ground both from the Palais Royal Metro station and - via a 'high-class' shopping mall - from the new car park at the Carrousel (600 cars and 80 tour buses). Already the Hall Napolkon below the Pyramid is beginning to generate its own life - concerts and film shows in the auditorium, cafeterias and shopping, as well as the inevitable special exhibitions. But fears that the public might never get further than this point seem to be misplaced - the pull of the escalators is too strong. In the meantime, those who favour tranquillity over spectacle might care to know that entry to the Louvre is still possible through the Porte Jaujard by the Pavillon de Flore.