The row over the Picasso museum in Paris took a new twist when local residents denounced a “hideous” new pergola built in the 17th-century building’s courtyard. 

The museum, whose delayed reopening prompted the Spanish painter’s son to accuse France of  dishonouring his father, had the four-metre tall structure built before gaining planning permission and will now have to remove part of it, Le Parisien newspaper reported.

One local residents association said the pergola, a passageway of columns supporting a roof of trelliswork on which climbing plants are trained to grow, would "disfigure one of the most beautiful villas of the 17th century".

Filmmaker François Margolin, who lives beside the museum in the fashionable Marais district, told Libération daily that he planned to make an official complaint to police over building without a permit.

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