2024-01-03 14:08:14
The most visited museum in the world nevertheless ensures that it no longer seeks attendance records as much, a strategy in line with the 30% increase in ticket prices applied from January 15.
Twelve days before the significant increase in its entrance fee (from 17 to 22 euros), the Louvre Museum is allowing itself its quarter of an hour of self-satisfaction. With 8.9 million visitors in 2023, “attendance up 14% compared to 2022 (7.8 million visitors) is approaching the pre-pandemic level” of 2019 (9.6 million visitors), trumpets the museum .
In line with its 30% increase in tickets, the Louvre, however, ensures that it “counts less on attendance records as in the past – in 2018, it welcomed 10.2 million visitors – having decided to maintain a daily gauge of 30,000 visitors” in order to ensure “better reception and visiting conditions” for the public. A limited daily gauge which will be “maintained during the Olympic Games (July 26-August 11)” despite the expected influx of visitors from around the world, says the Louvre.
Nevertheless, the museum remained open until 8 p.m. during the end-of-year holidays to improve the reception of the public and plans to institute, in addition to its expanded cultural programming – integrating dance, theater or cinema – , a second “night” visit every Wednesday from April in addition to that on Friday.
Among the other major projects of its president and director, Laurence des Cars, is also in the longer term the opening of a second entrance to the museum in order to “decongest” the main one, located under the large glass pyramid, designed originally to welcome “four to five million visitors per year”.
Attendance at the Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, remains mainly driven by tourism. In 2023, 32% of visitors welcomed were French – including 62% from Ile-de-France residents and 68% from foreign visitors. 13% are American and many Europeans come from border countries (7% Italy, 5% United Kingdom and Germany, 4% Spain). 60% of visitors discovered the Louvre for the first time in 2023 and 43% were under 26 years old, while 40% benefited from free admission to the museum. This concerns people under 25, the unemployed, beneficiaries of minimum social benefits, the disabled and their companions, teachers, cultural professionals and journalists.
Asian visitors, particularly from Japan, Korea and China, represented only 2.5% of the public, whereas in 2018, Chinese visitors alone represented 8% of attendance. The defection of the latter is explained, according to tourism stakeholders and the French authorities, by a “very gradual resumption of air connections” with China as well as “difficulties in issuing visas”.
Beyond the Louvre, all the major Parisian museums were full in 2023, breaking attendance records or returning to their 2019 levels. With nearly 3.9 million visitors in 2023, the Musée d’Orsay breaks a “historic record”, and totals, with its counterpart, the Orangerie (1.2 million visitors), 5.1 million visitors. As for the Musée du Quai Branly, it announces that it welcomed 1,410,000 visitors last year, “i.e. an increase of 40% compared to 2022”, or “an attendance higher than its level of attendance years before Covid”.
Update: addition at 4 p.m. of the figures for the Musée d’Orsay and the Orangerie; addition at 4:40 p.m. of those from Quai Branly.
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