Louvre hikes ticket prices ahead of summer Olympics in Paris
Ahead of next year’s Olympics, the national art museum in Paris, the Louvre, has announced its basic ticket price will increase early next year by 30 per cent.
Tickets are set to significantly increase from €17 to €22 from January 2024, coinciding with Paris hosting the 33rd Olympic Games as well as France’s first-ever summer Paralympics.
In a statement, the museum said it was part of a broader plan to offset energy costs, which have increased by 88 per cent.
The museum, which houses Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, is one of the most well-attended in the world, and the price increase will also be used to subsidise entry for under-18s from the European Union, art teachers, disabled visitors, and Ministry of Culture staff.
The upcoming 30% price hike represents the first the museum has increased its admission fees since 2017. In a statement, the Lourve noted that this year so far: “More than 3.6m visitors, most of them French, […] have passed through the doors of the collections and exhibitions of the largest museum in the world for free.”
To deal with potential congestion problems around the Louvre Pyramid, daily attendance for the museum remains capped at 30,000. In contrast, before the pandemic, this figure stood at 45,000, but there are currently no plans to increase it back to this level.
While the statement made no reference to the Olympics, the ticket hike follows other prices being raised in Paris ahead of the upcoming event, such as metro tickets and hotel prices.
Viewers travelling to see either the Mona Lisa or the 2024 Olympics will find Parisian hotels are now around three times more expensive than typical rates.
