President Macron to host ceremonial dinner at iconic Louvre Museum on July 14

French President Emmanuel Macron will show PM Modi the Louvre Museum and the two may get photographed with its most famous resident—Mona Lisa.

Updated on: Jul 8, 2023, 07:32:29 IST

By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be feted by French President Emmanuel Macron when he lands in Paris on July 13 afternoon to take the India-France ties to a new height.

File Photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron at Elysee Palace.

According to inputs from Paris and New Delhi, PM Modi will address a diaspora event at La Seine Musicale, a performing arts centre located on IIe Seguin island in scenic Seine River, in the western suburbs of Paris on the first day. Inaugurated in 2017, La Seine Musicale had hosted American folk-rock singer Bob Dylan in the 6000-seat Grand Seine theatre, where PM Modi will address the Indian diaspora on July 13. The La Siene Musicale is currently hosting the Festival of India called "Namaste France, organized by the Indian Embassy in France and the Ministry of Culture.

This will be followed by PM Modi being hosted by President Macron for a private dinner at his official residence at Elysee Palace. It is during this private dinner that both the leaders will discuss crucial global and bilateral issues and formal delegation level talks will follow after the Bastille Day parade on Champs Elysees in front of the French President on July 14.

Also Read: India seeks ‘strong public action’ on pro-Khalistan groups in UK

A 269 men strong contingent of Indian Army from the Punjab Regiment and Rajputana Rifles will participate in the parade on the ground while one single Indian Air Force Rafale fighter will be the show with three others following in a formation. INS Chennai, an indigenous guided missile destroyer of the Indian Navy, will be stationed at the strategic port of Brest, where the nuclear ballistic missile firing submarines (SSBNs) of the French Navy are stationed. But the grand show will follow after the delegation-level talks in Paris.

President Macron will host PM Modi at Cour Marly courtyard at the world-famous Louvre Museum for a ceremonial dinner expected to be attended by over 250 dignitaries. Filled with natural light and a ficus trees forest, the Cour Marly has an army of statues made by the finest sculptors of the world since the 19th century. It is after the French lay a sumptuous vegetarian spread for PM Modi at the Cour Marly that President Macron will take the Indian leader for a guided tour of the Louvre. Perhaps the two of them may get photographed with Louvre’s most famous and most expensive painting, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance.

The two leaders after the tour of the Louvre will attend the dazzling fireworks display over Eiffel Tower from the terrace at Louvre. While the bilateral ties between the two middle-level powers will reach the next stage after PM Modi’s visit, the red-carpet treatment given to the Indian leader will surpass any bilateral visit by an Indian PM in the past by miles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.