France. The phenomenon was largely anticipated and is confirmed in annual balance sheets. Parisian museums received fewer visitors in 2024 during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A variable drop depending on the location of museums and the composition of their audience, ranging from 14 % for the Louvre museum or 20 % for the Marmottan Monet Museum at 26 % for the Musée d’Orsay and up to 30 % for museums from the city of Paris. The major tourist sites such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower or the Sainte-Chapelle were also assigned.
But most establishments noted a rebound last fall which generally makes it possible to amortize the fall of summer and end the year slightly compared to 2023. The Louvre museum is emblematic of this double factor . He suffered the general decline in the number of tourists interested in culture during the Olympic Games, and access restrictions. He appeared in the security perimeter formed nine days before the opening ceremony and even had to close on July 25 and 26. But curiously he was less affected than other Parisian museums. It ends the year with a decrease of 2 %. However, the Louvre did not find its level of 2019 and even less its 2018 record. It is partly linked to the will of its president-director, Laurence des Cars, which limited the gauge to offer Better visit comfort, which remains however difficult to achieve as long as another entry will be created and visitors will agglutinate around The Mona Lisa. At the same time, Prado in Madrid increases its attendance by 12 % (3.45 million) compared to 2019.
The Petit Palais record
The contrast is clear with museums in the regions, which, on the whole, display an overall increase in their attendance (see table), unless special circumstances. According to INSEE, tourist summer attendance fell 1 % throughout France and 7.8 % in Île-de-France. The Ile -de -France rebound intervened later than elsewhere, from August in regions and only from October in Paris.
In a context of general decline, performance is very dependent on the attractiveness of temporary exhibitions. Thus “Jean Hélion. The prose of the world “at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris did not attract crowds in 2024 (67,000 visitors, from March 22 to August 18), far from the 409,000 of Nicolas de Staël the previous year (Sept 15 . The enormous success of his exhibition on the birth of impressionism – a historic record – however, did not allow the Musée d’Orsay to compensate for the summer drop. Conversely, the Musée du Petit Palais reaches a record, carried by a favorable word of mouth, free entry into the permanent collections and some beautiful exhibitions such as “Le Paris de la Moderne, 1905-1925” ( 278,000 visitors, Nov. 14 2023-14 Apr 2024). It is the same for the Museum of Decorative Arts which displays an progression of more than 30 %, carried by its exhibitions on fashion such as that on the designer Iris Van Herpen (371,000, 22 Nov. 2023-28 Apr 2024) . The Guimet Museum also continues its raising with a strong progression compared to 2019. The dynamic programming of its director begins to bear fruit.
The Center Pompidou announces a strong increase in its visitors in 2024 (3.2 million), but only compared to a year 2023 penalized by the strikes of staff, without finding the figures of 2019. These figures
Attendance 2024 in Ile -de -France heritage sites (selection) © Le Journal des Arts

Attendance 2024 in heritage sites in regions (selection) © Le Journal des Arts
ERRATUM – January 21, 2025 Contrary to what we have indicated in the
Jda
N ° 647, the number of visits to the Center Pompidou in 2024 only concerns visits to permanent collections and temporary collections.
32,800 people attended the film sessions and performances of the show, a figure down 9 % compared to 2023.The center has told us that access to the caterpillar has not been paying since 2021.