With The Record Of 10M Visitors Paris Louvre now is In the World’s Top List
Last year 10.2 million people visited the Louvre Museum in Paris which is a record, making it the world’s most popular museum of fine arts.
A Beyoncé and Jay-Z pop video created in the museum is reckoned to have helped boost the numbers.
Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez said it was an indication that Paris had recovered from the fall in tourism after the 2015 Islamist terror attacks.
Foreigners accounted for nearly 75 percent of the Louvre’s visitors in 2018.
The post-terror slump in tourism cut Paris visitor numbers by 30%, but in 2017 the total visiting the Louvre had already recovered to 8.1m, Mr. Martinez told the AFP news agency.
The Louvre houses Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and many other world-popular masterpieces.
Last year of June Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z released a music video for their single ‘Apeshit’ in which they posted in front of Louvre artworks, including the Mona Lisa.
Critics said the video challenged the thought of white cultural supremacy, for example by showing black dancers gyrating in front of The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon, a giant 19th-Century painting executed by Jacques-Louis David.
In 2018, the French formed the maximum visitor group (2.5 million), followed by Americans (nearly 1.5 million) and Chinese (nearly 1m).
The recent accomplishment by “gilets Jaunes” (yellow vests), angry at fuel tax rises and other economic hardships, only forced the Louvre to close for one day, Saturday 8 December.
Mr. Martinez said that improvements costing nearly €60m (£54m; $68m) meant the Louvre could cope better with the crowds of visitors. It has new ticket counters, a new luggage store room and new facilities for group tours.
This autumn season the Louvre will host a significant exhibition celebrating the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.
According to a survey by The Art Newspaper, in 2017 the world’s most-visited art museums were: the Louvre (8.1m), followed by Beijing’s National Museum of China (8m), in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (6.7m), the Vatican Museums (6.4m) and the British Museum in London (5.9m).