Parisian museums have recovered in 2022: their attendance has increased sharply, and is tending to return to its 2019 levels, three years after the start of the Covid-19 epidemic.

If tourists from Asia are still missing, foreigners, especially Americans, have returned to the cultural highlights of the capital.

The major exhibitions (Kokoschka, Munch, Frida Kahlo, etc.) have been acclaimed and the local public has returned in force to the museums of the City of Paris, according to figures published Thursday, January 5.

With 7.8 million visitors, the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, recorded an increase of 170% compared to 2021, but this attendance remains 19% lower than in 2019 (9.6 million).

Americans (18% of attendance in 2022 compared to 16% in 2019) are returning in number, but the Chinese public (8% of attendance in 2019) has remained "almost absent".

An absence "compensated" by an increasing presence of Europeans (Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain), even if the museum says it has suffered from international mobility restrictions still in force in the first quarter.

"A tremendous encouragement", comments its president, Laurence des Cars, determined to give priority, like many of her counterparts, to welcoming visitors.

They were 60% to survey for the first time the galleries of the Louvre last year, 45% being under 25 years old.

To improve the conditions of their visit, a daily gauge of 30,000 tickets available was decided in June, as well as the return of a late-night opening on Fridays and a live performance offer in response to current events at the museum.

The Palace of Versailles, one of the most visited sites in France, has also benefited from the return of foreigners, who represented 77% of attendance in 2022. It totals 6.9 million visitors (visits to the castle and shows), i.e. 16% less than in 2019 (8.2 million), a far cry from the 73% drop recorded in 2021. Its counterpart, the Orangerie, has almost returned to its 2019 level, just over one million of people having passed through its doors (-1%).

Success for the Munch exhibition

A beacon of Impressionism in the heart of Paris, the Musée d'Orsay attracted 3.2 million visitors in 2022 (-10% compared to 2019, a record year with 3.6 million), of which 58% were visitors. foreigners and a proportion of under-18s which will reach 14% in 2022.

The major autumn retrospective on the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch at Orsay is on the way to breaking a record with 600,000 visitors three weeks from its closing.

Reconnecting with the tradition of major multidisciplinary exhibitions which made it unique, the Center Pompidou welcomed three million people, mainly from the Ile-de-France region and Paris, and doubled its attendance compared to 2021 (1.5 million), returning to a "close level from that of 2019," according to the museum.

Its permanent collections of modern and contemporary art even recorded more visitors than in 2019 (1.5 million compared to 1.4).

The Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum, dedicated to primitive arts, recorded one million visitors, almost its 2019 level (1.1 million).

Record for the museums of the City of Paris

After six years of renovation work for half of them, the 14 museums of the City of Paris record for their part a "historic record", underlines with AFP the Paris Museum establishment.

Among them, the Carnavalet museum on the history of Paris, reopened in 2021, totals more than a million visitors, as does the Petit Palais, while the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM) accounts for nearly 560,000 visitors, nearly twice as many as in 2019, attracted by the major exhibitions, such as those devoted to the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka, at the MAM, or to Frida Kahlo at the Palais Galliera.

Record also for the Natural History Museum on all of its sites with more than 3.5 million visitors compared to 3.3 million in 2019.

For its first full year of opening to the public since 2019, the Center des monuments nationaux (CMN), which manages around a hundred cultural sites including the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, the Arc de Triomphe and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, is also returning to its pre-health crisis level with more than ten million visitors in 2022.

With AFP

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