Attendance At The Louvre Is Way Down
Tourism to Paris is in bad shape—and the city’s cultural institutions have been feeling the pain. The string of terrorist attacks and floods in France have resulted in a significant decline in visitors to Paris, notably among tourists from Japan, Russia, and China. The state’s minister of foreign affairs, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has even announced a summit this September to develop strategies of reviving the tourism sector, which accounts for roughly 7 percent of the country’s economy. In a phone conversation with a representative for the Louvre—which is the most-visited museum in the world—artnet News discovered that attendance from January through June dropped 20 percent compared to the previous year.
