Lost at the Louvre? An app will help you

Paris

WITH crowds 10 deep in front of the Mona Lisa, how can a visitor plot an escape within the vast maze of the Louvre? Let the bouncing blue ball on your phone or tablet show you the way.

This month, the Louvre introduced a geo-locator application for multimedia devices that can instantly calculate a path through the museum from da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" to Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa". The app is a key part of a 53.5 million euro (S$89 million) project to make the museum more user-friendly and accessible to its more than 8 million annual visitors, about 80 per cent of them foreign tourists. The makeover includes a redesigned reception area, shorter waiting times to enter the museum through the Louvre's pyramid and a wireless network. There are also amenities like new high-tech Japanese toilets.