SLEEPOVERS

Here’s Your Chance to Spend a Night Alone With the Mona Lisa

The Louvre and Airbnb have teamed up for a night at the museum.

April 3, 2019

Mona Lisa relocated in the Louvre's Salle des Etats in Paris, France on April 06th, 2005.

Raphael Gaillarde/Getty Images

Since Beyoncé and Jay-Z chose the Mona Lisa’s home for the setting of their “Apes*t” music video, the Louvre has experienced a record-breaking surge in visitors, with 10.2 million people within the last year. Only two, though, will get the opportunity to be the next couple standing in for Bey and Jay. Taking over from JR in celebrating the 30th birthday of the museum’s pyramid, Airbnb has partnered with the Louvre to arrange a night at the museum for two lucky guests, and not just in a pyramid of their own inside the now 30-year-old glass one designed by I. M. Pei. They’ll also get to spend a portion of the evening chez Mona Lisa*, joining her in a pop-up living room for an apéritif.

According to Airbnb, the Mona Lisa will also serve as the evening’s “host,” though the Venus de Milo will be taking over for the “colorful menu inspired by love and beauty” prepared by a personal chef that will make up dinner. (Or, depending your approach, the catering to the next phase of your rare uninterrupted selfie session with a masterpiece.)

Visitors taking photos of Leonardo da Vinci’s *Mona Lisa* at the Louvre Museum in Paris, April 2018.

Pedro Fiuza/Getty Images

A “VIP tour” that’s apparently usually given to “presidents and celebrities” is also on the agenda, which closes out with another reminder that this is the world’s premier art-world glamping opportunity: an “intimate acoustic concert.” (The venue, by the way, is inside the former apartments of Napoleon III.)

At that point, the guests’ attendants will kindly escort them out of the museum and to the pyramid for some alone time beneath the “shimmering glass and starry sky” (admittedly obscured by an Airbnb logo-bearing tent). After packing up their things—perhaps in a Jeff Koons x Louis Vuitton duffel bag?—and before being escorted off the premises entirely, they’ll also enjoy a Parisian breakfast in bed, though potentially not as leisurely as Parisians would expect. (The sleepover will take place on Tuesday, the only day of the week that the museum is closed, April 30, meaning that the museum will have reopened to the public by the following morning.)

If it turns out you aren’t the lucky winner—applications, featuring the prompt “Why would you be the Mona Lisa’s perfect guest?,” must be submitted two and a half weeks in advance—fret not. Airbnb has already promised another “series of exclusive Experiences” (yes, capital “E”) at the Louvre between May and December of 2019.

Unfortunately, those “Experiences” seem unlikely to extend over to the Louvre’s counterpart in Abu Dhabi, which is sans pyramid. Then again, it’s probably for the best if they wait to start hosting their own sleepovers—at least until they finally find its star $450 million painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which has been mysteriously missing since late 2017.