Louvre increases ticket prices and expands evening openings

The Louvre will retuct the ticket price in 2024, raising it from the current 17 to 22 euros. The new price, which marks the first increase since 2017, will go into effect on January 15, 2024. The museum announced this yesterday, taking the issue very broadly with a statement headlined “At the Louvre, more than one in two French visitors enter for free.” In fact, the increase is motivated by the increased expense of maintaining free entry for current eligible persons, namely those under 18, 18-25 year olds residing in an EU country, teachers, staff of the French Ministry of Culture, ICOM and ICOMOS members, guides, journalists, artists registered with the Maison des Artistes, unemployed job seekers, recipients of the minimum guaranteed income, the disabled and their carers. In addition, everyone gets in free on the first Friday of every month from 6 to 9:45 p.m. (except in July and August).

According to the Louvre, sustaining the free for these categories and maintaining a satisfactory quality of reception, without changing it and coping with rising costs (the museum rattles off, for example, a +88% increase in energy expenditure), necessarily entails a price increase.

The museum has let it be known that in 2023, more than 3.6 million visitors (mostly French, Ile-de-France, and Parisian) walked through the doors of the collections and exhibitions of the world’s largest museum for free-a figure that corresponds to 40 percent of all visitors and 60 percent of the museum’s annual French visitors, meaning that nearly two out of every five visitors enter the Louvre Museum for free and more than one out of every two French visitors.

“I am happy and proud to see the French public, from Ile-de-France and Paris, taking back the Louvre Museum,” said Director Laurence des Cars. “The quality of this relationship is at the heart of our mission. We work to return this ’desire for the Louvre’ to our local public and try to open for them new doors: those of renewed mediations, those of the cultural otherness that this museum with a universal vocation brings, that of sharing and pleasure.”

The exceptional attendance that has characterized the museum in recent months has been attributed to the expansion of opening hours, particularly the evening openings, which are attractive especially to local audiences (95 percent of reservations for evening openings come from French citizens, the vast majority of whom come from one of the eight departments of the Île-de-France). The Louvre thus announces that it is also working to rethink its offer to visitors and imagine new formats better suited to its audience. A public festival “Les étés du Louvre” has been launched in 2023, combining concerts, theater, dance, and family activities throughout the area; a program of performances at the heart of the permanent collections; exclusive guided tours of the collections led by contemporary artists; and many other ways to create new dialogues between visitors and the museum. Special schedules for schoolchildren have also been devised: last October the “School Tuesdays” initiative was launched, a new program that guarantees exceptional visiting conditions for schoolchildren , as they are welcomed on Tuesdays, the day the museum is closed to the public. Finally, to continue on this path and consolidate ties with local audiences, the Louvre is working with labor organizations to offer a second evening opening, every Wednesday, scheduled to begin in April 2024. This arrangement will be considered during the Louvre’s social board meeting on December 19.

Meanwhile, for the end of 2023, the museum is proposing a delayed closing time of 8 p.m. (instead of 6 p.m.) from Dec. 28, 2023 to Jan. 6, 2024 (except for Monday, Jan. 1 and Tuesday, Jan. 2, closing days ). This operation will further allow people to discover the museum in the evening, with a measure designed especially for Ile-de-France workers and their families during the holiday season (visits will require reservations).

Louvre increases ticket prices and expands evening openings

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