A SUMPTUOUS renovation of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the centrepiece of Louis XIV’s château, was unveiled yesterday after an 18-month makeover costing £8 million.

The 75-yard long Galerie des Glaces, opened in 1684 and where the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was signed, is the latest in a series of glittering Parisian sites to reopen this year after multimillion-pound overhauls.

Admirers of the hall, seat of the Sun King’s court, have been awed by the re-emergence of the bright blue lapis lazuli that Charles le Brun, Louis’ painter, used to decorate the vaulted ceiling.

“The heart and the emblem of Versailles has recovered its splendour,” said Christine Albanel, the château’s director.

The restoration of the first half of the hall has, however, highlighted the strains imposed by the surging attraction of France’s great monuments.

Versailles, which receives more than three million visitors a year, announced that it would require individual reservations from 2007 to regulate the flow of tourists and limit wear and tear.

“A very high concentration of visitors can damage the artworks and paintings,” said Frédéric Didier, the chief architect. “The problem is that everyone rushes in at the same time, causing brutal spikes in temperature, condensation and evaporation. It is not comfortable for the tourists either,” he said.

Advance bookings, required at Spain’s Alhambra and the Uffizi in Florence among other sites, are a novelty for France, although its monuments receive by far the highest number of visitors.

The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, has just reported a 14 per cent rise to 7.3 million this year. The rush, driven by Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code as well as by expanding tourism from Russia and China, has earned £25 million in ticket sales. Renovations since the 1980s have enabled the former royal palace to handle the tourist explosion for a while but it is again creaking at the seams.

The Grand Palais, the monumental late-Victorian exhibition hall, is struggling to cope with visitors since it reopened in September after a 12-year, £85 million rebuild. It is housing a fairground including a big wheel over the Christmas holidays.

Worst afflicted is the Mont Saint-Michel monastery, on the Normandy coast. Visitors will be tightly regulated under a rescue plan which includes the banning of road traffic.

The museum managers welcome the income that flows from their success and the sponsorship and commercial donations that the State encourages.

Some critics are, however, sniffing at the rise of mass cultural tourism and money-raising ploys such as an “adopt-a-statue” scheme at Versailles and catered evening parties at the Louvre. Libération lamented yesterday what it called the paradox of culture tourism.

“The Mona Lisa has never received so many visitors since she has become almost invisible, hidden behind 200 people and eight inches of armoured glass,” it said.

Top Attractions

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris
10 million visitors

Sacré Coeur Basilica, Paris
8 million

Eiffel Tower
5.9 million

Louvre museum
5.7 million

Pompidou Centre, Paris
5.3 million

Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy
3.2 million

Château de Versailles
2.8 million

Cité des Sciences, La Villette, Paris
2.8 million

Musée d’Orsay (modern art museum), Paris
1.8 million

Rheims Cathedral
1.5 million

Chartres Cathedral
1.5 million

Pont du Gard, near Nimes
1.1 million

Arc de Triomphe, Paris
1 million

Sarlat, Dordogne, ancient country town in heart of
1 million

Army Museum at Les Invalides, Paris
900,000