There will be no need to travel all the way to Paris to see the Louvre from the end of this year. Over 200 of the museum's most important works will be moving to a new branch in Lens in the Pas de Calais, just across the Channel.

Some of the world's finest museums and galleries are embracing high-tech guides. So, is the Nintendo DS set to be the Louvre's latest big-name attraction? By Rebecca Armstrong

The discovery of another version of da Vinci's masterpiece shows that La Gioconda took him 16 years to paint

Nintendo will be providing the Louvre with Nintendo 3DS systems that will house an exclusive audio guide from 11th April.

French artists of the ancien régime were rarely given to intimate, everyday studies – which is why Chardin's boys at leisure are so enticingly mysterious

In a world dominated by anoraks, bobble hats, enamel badges and vacuum flasks, railways and fashion are not obvious partners. Most of us boys gave up finding trains sexy when we discovered girls. And most girls – of any age – have never found trains sexy at all.

Sensational find in Madrid's Prado museum rewrites the history of art

A pay deal signed during the reign of Louis XIV has led to indefinite strike at famed Comédie Française

Art experts have criticised plans by the National Gallery to move a fragile drawing by Leonardo da Vinci after it emerged that the institution's own conservators have warned that the work will never be fit to travel.

The American artist Cy Twombly, whose elegant and evocative swirls, splodges and scribbles made him one of the great figures of modern art, died of cancer in Italy yesterday, aged 83.

After missing the cut at the French Open yesterday, Bubba Watson said he wanted to leave the country "as quickly as possible".

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, who died on 23 June aged 97, was a pioneering Egyptologist who prodded General Gamal Abdel Nasser to help salvage Nubian antiquities.

The standout here is the ineffably lovely Être et Avoir, Philibert's documentary which charts the infinitely patient Monsieur Georges Lopez's final year of teaching in a village primary school in the Auvergne region.