Six million.

This is the estimate of the number of people who saw L'Arc du Triomphe, Wrapped (wrapped) in Paris, a posthumous work of Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude, according to a report released on Tuesday.

This is more than for the

Wrapped Reichstag

in Berlin in 1995 (five million) and that for

The Gates

in 2005 in New York (four million), according to the teams in charge of the organization of the project, "crazy dream" of the Bulgarian artist, known the world over for his monumental packaging.

Christo had also packed the Pont-Neuf in Paris in 1985 but no estimate of attendance was made at the time, according to the same source.

Of the six million people estimated to have seen and walked around the building from September 18 to October 3, 3.2 million spent several hours nearby and 1.1 million came specifically to see the famous monument wrapped in silver and bluish film, according to the report.

Over three million spent several hours nearby

Among them, "30% foreigners and 70% French including 40% from Ile-de-France", according to the report. 63,500 of them also bought a ticket to climb to the top of the building during the installation, according to data provided by the Center des Monuments Nationaux (CMN). The figures put forward are based on several data sources, including Orange Flux Vision Tourisme, a device used by the operator to establish an overall estimate of attendance in predefined areas, as well as on data from the RATP measuring attendance at the five stations. metro and RER trains that lead to the Arc de Triomphe, according to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Forty departments use this "data purchase", validated by the CNIL, the French gendarme of personal data, to measure the number of visitors to a tourist area or destination, according to the same source.

During the event, the Place de l'Etoile, where the Arc de Triomphe is located, was closed to traffic for three weekends in a row.

Funded by the sale of works by Christo

The project, carried out in partnership with the CMN in coordination with the City of Paris, was carried out with 25,000 square meters of recyclable silver-blue fabric and 3,000 meters of recyclable red rope.

At a cost of 14 million euros, the project was funded by the sale of original works of art by Christo, including preparatory studies, collages, models, works from the 1950s and 1960s and lithographs .

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