The Louvre Museum announced on Friday an increase in the price of its entrance ticket, six months before the Olympics when Paris is expected to welcome even more tourists than usual. From 15 January, the entrance fee will increase to 22 euros, after remaining at 17 euros since 2017. This 29% increase is to be compared to inflation of 30% over the same period, according to the INSEE consumer price index.
The Louvre is the most visited museum in the world, with 86,000 m² of spaces open to the public, and 7.2 million visitors in 2022. Its ticket sales brought in €76.5 million last year, according to the annual report. This covered only a quarter of its operating costs, the rest being financed by appropriations from the Ministry of Culture and other resources, including patronage.
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Opened in 1793 in a former royal palace in the heart of Paris, the Louvre is one of the great tourist attractions of the French capital. It presents extremely rich collections, which range from the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Middle East several millennia before our era to the fine arts of the nineteenth century. Visitors come from all over the world to admire Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (early <>th century), the Venus de Milo (<>nd century BC) and Egyptian antiquities in an excellent state of preservation.
Second Entry
In a statement, the museum pointed out that "more than one in two French visitors enter for free". This includes people under 25 years of age, the unemployed, recipients of minimum social benefits, the disabled and accompanying persons, teachers, cultural professionals and journalists. Of the estimated 8.7 million visitors in 2023, 3.6 million (or 41%) are expected not to have paid an entrance fee.
In the coming years, the museum hopes to finance a project to open a second entrance, in addition to the one under the Pyramid inaugurated in 1988, which is now saturated. It would be done by the east façade, at the level of the Louvre-Rivoli metro station. The timeline and cost are not known. The Louvre is also continuing to acquire works. He launched an appeal to patrons in early November to become the owner of a still life by Chardin, The Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761), which costs €24.3 million. Paris will host the Olympic Games from July 26 to August 11.