Too Many Tourists?

The staff at the Louvre shut it down

This week, workers at the Louvre took it upon themselves to close the doors to the famous museum.

At first glance, it seems unreasonable. Incidents in Europe of anti-tourist activism this week seem, excuse the expression, foreign to Americans. Here, tourism means commerce, and the United States loves nothing more than visitors coming to spend money.

But the sentiment is not shared by the people of Barcelona, where tourists were targeted by locals with water pistols. Nor is it welcomed in Lisbon, Venice, Mallorca, and other locales where protestors marched on Monday in opposition to the summer influx of millions of tourists they claim displace them and make city life unpleasant.

It makes for a strange contrast to the current controversy in the U.S., where protestors are striking out against the removal of people in the country illegally, many of whom entered as tourists and simply never left.

For the staff at the Louvre, however, the problem isn’t merely an issue of metropolitan life. Instead, they seem to have decided that the wear and tear they see inflicted on the what is already the world’s most visited museum could no longer be tolerated. Security guards, gallery attendants, ticket agents, and others refused to staff their posts in what appeared to be a spontaneous strike meant to protect the building and its collection.

There’s something to their decision. No one—not the museum’s administrators nor the politicians who promise improvements—knows better how the massive crowds at the Louvre are impacting the galleries and the art they house. The Louvre, like the Vatican, the Met, and the British Museum, have seen a large spike in visitors since the end of the COVID lockdowns. Many other medium-to-large museums have seen similar increases. But very few have added frontline staff commensurate with the resurgent attendance. That makes for perilous conditions in a building designed for contemplation and display, not stadium concert-sized audiences.

The staff at the Louvre clearly take their charge to protect its collection very seriously, and their strike was not merely a stand taken for increased wages (though the need for better working conditions was indeed raised). Instead, these custodians of some of the world’s most important cultural artifacts gave voice to silent cultural property quickly approaching duress. And for this they should be commended.