Philippe de Montebello, who has led the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years and has virtually become synonymous with its monumental profile, announced Tuesday that he planned to retire at the end of the year.

A patrician figure whose mellifluous multilingual voice on the museum’s audio guides is known to millions of visitors around the world, he is the eighth and longest-serving director in the institution’s 138-year history.

Mr. de Montebello, 71, has more than doubled the museum’s physical size during his tenure, carving out majestic new galleries suited to the Met’s encyclopedic holdings. Today it is the city’s biggest tourist attraction, with millions of visitors a year... CAREL VOGEL/www.nytimes.com

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It was never about celebrity architecture, fashion or political correctness: Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan for three decades, outside the museum in 1978. (photo Paul Hosefros/The New York Times)