The high-tech art lab hidden underneath Paris

PARIS – It looks like the lair of a Bond villain: behind armoured doors, buried underground below the Louvre in Paris, lies one of the most high-tech art labs in the world. Across three floors and nearly 6,000 square metres, the Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF) includes its own particle accelerator called AGLAE, and is bustling with radiologists, chemists, geologists, metallurgists, archaeologists and engineers. The 150-strong team examines around 1,000 artworks per year, discovering precisely which materials and methods went into making them,…