The Louvre Museum in Paris opened its doors Monday with reduced capacity and continued closing of one third of its halls, after it closed for 16 weeks due to the Covid 19-pandemic.
The museum lost more than 40 million euros ($ 45 million) in card sales. Museum president and director Jean-Luc Martinez said the museum will continue to face difficulties in the coming years as the world adjusts to the emerging Corona virus.
Not all parts of the museum will be available for visits, as the sections that will be opened to the public are limited to 70% of the total area of ​​45 thousand square meters, including the Egyptian Antiques Department, while the sections that are difficult to control movement will remain closed.
Timings are now available online from June 15. As of June 24, reservations of this type amounted to 12,000, most of them for dates during the month of July.
Preventive measures are observed, requiring visitors to set up masks, mark traffic paths with signs, and prevent visitors from returning.
In front of the Mona Lisa, where tourists from all over the world used to take souvenir photos, signs were placed on the floor indicating the places where visitors were allowed to stand to take selfies.
Last year, foreign tourists made up 70% of the Louvre´s 9.6 million visitors. But the museum will now miss the many American and Asian tourists who used to visit the museum, the world´s largest and most attractive visitor in the summer.
Martinez made it clear during a press conference last week that the museum will miss 80% of its fans this year. The number of visitors will not exceed 20 to 30% of the number we received in the summer of 2019, i.e. four thousand to ten thousand visitors per day at most. "
To stimulate the movement, the museum relies on attracting young people and visitors from groups who are less financially capable of tourists, for example the inhabitants of the greater Paris region.
