A general view of snow outside the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 16 Photo: AFP

France's Louvre museum, the world's largest art museum, launched a Chinese version of its website on Saturday as well as a new database website providing information for 482,000 artworks and cultural relics in French and English. 

The museum has added a large number of pictures and videos with Chinese subtitles in addition to traditional text introductions on the Chinese website, which can be viewed on both computers and tablets, according to a press release on the museum's official WeChat account.

In order to allow more Chinese visitors to learn about the Louvre museum, an enchanting former palace, in a comprehensive way, the website is divided into three main themes: Visit, Explore and What's on.

"I am sure that this digital content is going to further inspire people to come to the Louvre to discover the collections in person," said Jean-Luc Martinez, president-director of the museum, according to the press release. 

Many Chinese netizens expressed their excitement for getting access to the newly launched website.

While the database website is currently only available in French and English, the museum has plans to expand language choices to include Spanish and Chinese.

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, many international museums have also made similar moves. The British Museum in the UK has also launched a Chinese website and the Hermitage Museum in Russia opened its first online store on China's e-commerce platform Tmall. 

Global Times