Maybe they shouldn’t aggregate so much world heritage into a single complex?
Oh no. Now where will I go to see stolen loot?
The Louvre’s spontaneous strike erupted during a routine internal meeting, as gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel refused to take up their posts in protest over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called “untenable” working conditions.
Good for them.
The Louvre’s spontaneous strike erupted during a routine internal meeting, as gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel refused to take up their posts in protest over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called “untenable” working conditions.
It’s rare for the Louvre to close its doors. It has happened during war, during the pandemic, and in a handful of strikes — including spontaneous walkouts over overcrowding in 2019 and safety fears in 2013. But seldom has it happened so suddenly, without warning, and in full view of the crowds.
Headline makes it sound like the Louvre closed forever. Turns out, it’s just the French being French. They didn’t even overturn a car and set it on fire in the parking lot.
Give it time, we’ll get our fire.
Not even a single burning car? Shite party. I’m not going.
That sucks, I had this on my bucket list, but now I don’t know. Hope workers get what they want. I wonder why not have people make reservations and take only certain number of visitors a day?
Because that’s not how you maximize profits.
Nordic countries we visited: smaller museums (musea?) but free to enter. No profit there.
unmanageable crowds
Oh wow. Even with timed entry
Thousands and thousands of people line up every day to wait in long, slow moving lines just to get to the barrier around the Mona Lisa to photograph it.
The Mona Lisa might be the most reproduced image in all of history. And the people who get the opportunity to see it in person can only think to photograph it one more time.
It’s almost if that were the point. Taking a selfie with Lisa is the correct way to experience this art. If your camera broke, there is no reason to wait on line just to what, see the painting?
My experience visiting the Mona Lisa was being disappointed how small it was hanging on the wall, looking even smaller surrounded by all the protective glass, and then even smaller because of how far back the crowd has to stand.
That was a split second thought, interrupted by being aggressively pushed forward so that people behind me could get a better look with their cameras, while I’m pushing back, trying not to trample a tiny kid standing in front of me. Easily the worst part of my visit to France was seeing the Mona Lisa.
Pro tip, seek out the “Spanish Mona Lisa” which was produced by the same art team as the real Mona Lisa as one of its pro or trial pieces and you can get right up to it, nearly. Saw it at an expo in Shanghai and the family loved it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado)
It’s also one of the most disappointing tourist attractions, with the most common complaint is that it’s smaller than most visitors imagined. It’s like waiting in line to summit Everest. The experience is not as rewarding as knowing you’ve done it.
I’d happily climb any of the 1000ft “peaks” around me over telling everyone how much money I spent to be here while slowly moving in line up to the top of what is now basically a trash dump.
Don’t forget hiring sherpas to carry my shit up the mountain and help me not die.
or when when you die from altitude sickness and you are left a frozen corpse, leaving all your trash there too.
On Mt Everest your body becomes an exhibit, that’s more than most people can dream of.
When I went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, I was in a big crowd huddled around it behind stanchions with two guards on either side. It’s a cool painting, and it’s cool to say I saw it in person I guess, but the museum itself is fucking HUGE. I don’t think I even saw all of it that one day, and we were there for a few hours.
I took a picture of it through another guy’s phone in front of me. He was about to take a picture, as he held up his phone for a good angle, and I snapped it as it was on his screen.
Now that’s art.
I heard somewhere that it would take a person 6-8 months to watch every exhibit in The Louvre.
It is absolutely mind boggling. So much amazing art at the Louvre and the only thing people want to see is a small picture we have all seen hundreds of time.
It’s no longer about seeing the small picture we’ve seen hundreds of times.
It’s about showing their followers and friends on social media that they were physically there to take a picture of a portrait that everyone has seen hundreds of times.
Social media is killing our species.
Oh, I remember going to the Louvre well before Social Media and back then most people around the Mona Lisa were, just like nowadays, far more worried about taking pictures of it than actually just enjoying it.
IMHO, people always tended to be weird around famous shit and famous people.
It wasn’t social media that made most people be like that. Most likely it’s the reverse: social is successful because most people are like that.
its incredible, and you get to enjoy the awesome works on the floors leading to the fake mona lisa in peace.
all the idiots beeline to the little chamber that can be skipped altogether (you can glimpse on the mini painting and the huge crowd from the grand hallway outside)
the museum also had nintendo switch audio guides with almost working gps tracking and some audios were actually interesting. rule of thumb: if they start with french names you never heard of its not getting better.
Probably a lot of overlap with the type of people that spend hundreds of dollars to see a popular band play their most popular song everyone’s heard several times.
It’s so annoying if you AREN’T there to take a picture of it. We were in Paris last year and went to the Musee d’Orsay but didn’t go to the Louvre. We like to stand and appreciate the artwork, taking in the beauty of them. It was so hard to do with any painting even remotely famous, since there were lines of people pushing to the front to take the best possible picture of it (which has already been taken by pro photographers). They weren’t even looking at the painting, just their phone’s screen as they took the picture then walked away. I’m just standing still looking forward, and they would shoulder me aside to get a better photo then walk away. Other paintings just as pretty? Who cares, not famous.
No one goes to the Louvre, it’s too crowded.
Straight out of Futurama:
“Did many people drive in new York city, Fry?”
“No way! There was too much traffic!”
It’s often attributed to Yogi Berra, but it’s older than that: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/
So you’re saying this joke wasn’t used in Futurama?
oh no. where will dan brown’s hero have his adventures now?
The secret chamber in Mount Rushmore.
