Business Dec. 08, 2011 - 05:27AM JST ( 2 )

PARIS —

Toshiba Corp this week held a lighting ceremony to celebrate the illumination of the exterior of the Louvre, the world’s most popular art museum, with its new LED lighting. From now on, the Pyramid, the three pyramidions and the Colbert pavilion of the Louvre will be suffused with the soft glow of the lighting every evening and night.

The lighting ceremony was held at the Louvre on Tuesday night, with the participation of Norio Sasaki, the president of Toshiba Corp, and Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre Museum, and many other guests.

As one of the world’s most famous buildings, the palace of the Louvre must be lit in a way that brings out its intrinsic beauty, drawing attention to the building but not intruding on its atmosphere. This is especially true of the physical light fittings. Working in collaboration with the Louvre, Toshiba’s lighting engineers developed and installed six series and ten models of lighting fixtures, including high beam-lamps to illuminate the Pyramid and the palace walls.

Toshiba’s ceremony marked the switching on of some 350 light fittings out of a total of 3,200 that will eventually completely replace 4,500 high energy xenon lamps. The remaining facades of the Napoleon Court will be completed in April 2012, and the courtyard will follow in 2013. When fully installed, the environmentally-friendly LEDs will cut the annual power consumption for exterior lighting by 73%, from 392,000 to 105,000 watt-hour.