major museums overwhelmed during the holidays

by time news

“In this exceptionally busy period, the visit slots are full. We inform visitors wishing to buy a ticket on site that the wait exceeds several hours. » Stated in red letters, on the front page of the Louvre Museum’s online ticket office, this message has aroused the disappointment of many visitors and foreign tourists who hoped to take advantage of the Christmas holidays to discover the collections. Many have indeed had to give up their visit, for lack of having reserved the precious sesame.

Same interminable queue in front of the Center Pompidou, Friday, December 30, where the reception staff were forced to turn away all visitors who had not purchased their ticket in advance, because of too many people, especially for exhibitions. And impossible to find a free reservation slot on January 1, except at the very end of the day.

As for the Musée d’Orsay, the reservation allowing free access because of the first Sunday of the month proved impossible on its site. Closed on January 2, the museum also posted full reservations for the whole day of Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 all morning.

The massive return of tourists to the capital

This rush to museums is explained both by the Christmas holidays and the massive return of French and foreign tourists to the capital. We saw it on New Year’s Eve on the Champs-Élysées. The police headquarters expected about 500,000 people, there were a million. According to the Paris Tourist Office, the metropolis would have welcomed nearly 34.5 million tourists in 2022, a number still 10% lower than that of 2019 but which saw a clear rise at the end of the year.

On social networks, some commentators criticized the organization of the museums, as the Louvre also had to refuse visitors due to the crowds pressing into the large gallery and the Mona Lisa room, while many other spaces of the collections permanent remained almost deserted. Wouldn’t there be a way to at least offer alternative tours?

Laurence des Cars, the president of the great national museum, does not hide that she intends to review the methods of welcoming the public, in particular by opening a new entrance, in the courtyard of the Manège.

Privileged reservations

Another difficulty: the trend of major museums, since the health crisis, to increasingly favor reservations to the detriment of the quota of tickets sold on site, in order to better distribute visitors over all time slots and thus smooth their flows. . This has the effect of reducing spontaneous visits, regret many amateurs. Especially when, as during this holiday week, museums overwhelmed by crowds hardly sell any tickets at the counter.

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