Plague of Phone-Addicted Tourists Shuts Down the Louvre

If you are traveling to Paris in the near future, there are bad news and good news. The bad news: you will probably not be able to see the Mona Lisa or one of the masterpieces suspended inside the Louvre, because it is currently closed. The good news: you can see a solid workers’ movement at work. Monday, the staff of the most visited museum in the world was on strike, forcing the museum to close its doors on concerns about the effects of mass tourism, According to the Associated Press.

The judgment followed a weekend of events against tourism that has spread across Europe. In Spain, travelers lying around in popular tourism destinations have been soaked by demonstrators Armed with water pistols. Mass demonstrations also broke out in Mallorca, Venice, Italy and the capital of Portugal in Lisbon, by APWith the inhabitants who direct songs like “wherever you look at, everything you see are tourists”. The objection that residents have for visitors is mainly their role in provoking an accessibility crisis, which causes things such as arrows because the houses are sought on Airbnb and other short -term rental markets.

Overcrowding problems have tormented other hot spots across Europe, which are increasingly dominated by people looking for a picturesque view, perhaps not realizing their very presence. German publications Deutsche Welle recently highlighted How the destinations popularized on social networks like Instagram and Tiktok have become invaded by visitors, pushing the inhabitants and making the beautiful sites and sounds less accessible to others.

Following this growing movement, the Louvre workers spontaneously decided to go out during a standard staff meeting on Monday, according to the AP. Attendants at the gallery, ticket offices and security have all refused to operate their messages, complaining that the crowd has become unmanageable and that the museum is heard.

According to a Guardian reportThe Louvre sees around nine million people go through its doors each year and around 20,000 people a day to see the Mona Lisa. This pedestrian traffic has become so untenable that it was announcement Earlier this year, the Louvre would be redesigned to give itself a masterpiece of Leonard Da Vinci to help to mitigate the impact of so many people who want to stop and take an image of the painting.

A common refrain of people visiting the painting is that the experience is disappointing due to the speed with which you are inaugurated in the room with hundreds of others. “You do not see painting,” said Ji-Hyun Park, a traveler from Seoul, in South Korea, told the Associated Press. “You see phones. You see elbows. You feel heat. And then, you are pushed.”

The popularity of painting has long been a problem for the museum, to the point that it has been suggested Whether the painting is removed or moved. But without any autonomous room ready, the painting is always suspended from the museum. And with the staff saying that they simply do not deal with this, thousands of tourists with hand tickets were suspended on Monday, unable to see anything inside the glass pyramid. It is not known when the museum will return to full staff and features, which will always leave the actual workers outdated, but will flow the dollars of tourism.