Reporting from Lens, France — It's an abandoned coal mining site in a depressed corner of northern France that was pummeled by the two world wars.
Soon, a branch of the Louvre Museum will rise up on this unlikely site. Work is to start soon on a sleek glass-and-aluminum building that will house hundreds of the Louvre's treasures, from Egyptian artifacts to Renaissance paintings to Islamic art.
The modern building will let the venerable French museum experiment, "giving us a new viewpoint on the Louvre's works," said Louvre Director Henri Loyrette.
The museum, expected to open in 2012 at a cost of 150 million euros ($226 million), is part of a strategy to spread art beyond the traditional bastions of culture in Paris to new audiences in the provinces. The Pompidou Center modern art museum is opening a branch in the eastern city of Metz, and it also hopes to show its masterpieces in a traveling circus big top that will travel to culturally deprived areas.
Lens was picked for the Louvre project because it could use a reversal of fortune. The city was reduced to rubble by the Germans during World War I. During World War II it was occupied by the Nazis and battered by Allied bombings.
For decades, workers risked their lives in the city's coal mines, and then the mines closed -- the last one in 1986 -- plunging the area into hardship. Lens' unemployment rate is about 14%, well above the national level of 9.5%.
French officials say they want to thank Lens for its sacrifices. Inaugurating the construction site, the culture minister asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence for 42 miners who died in a 1974 accident. The miners' work "was a form of sacrifice that all of France benefited from," Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said.
On the construction site -- a hill -- few traces remain of the former mines underneath. Trees have grown up, hiding the surrounding city and creating a surprisingly bucolic setting. Former miners in hard hats and jumpsuits were on hand for the inauguration.
"This region doesn't have much, but Lens has a football team and now the Louvre," said Lucien Laurent, a 72-year-old who started working in the mines at age 14 -- a profession he called "not quite slavery but almost."
Officials hope Louvre-Lens could help transform the city the way the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, turned a struggling industrial area into a hot travel destination. There are questions, though, about whether Lens has much else to offer to tourists: It's rainy and flat and isn't known for its food, while Bilbao is near beaches and offers Basque cuisine.
