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A rebound in tourist numbers to Paris,
following a drop after Islamist militants killed 130 people in
the French capital in November 2015, also helped the museum
achieve a 25 percent increase in visitors on the previous year.
The Louvre said it was happy at the response to the video by
Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z for the song "APES**T" in which
they perform in front of the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and
other famous artworks. It has been viewed nearly 150 million
times on YouTube.
"It is good to see that these American artists, creators of
today, are interested in a museum of archaeology and ancient
art," Louvre Director Jean-Luc Martinez told Reuters.
The Louvre's previous record was 9.7 million visitors, in 2012,
when the museum inaugurated its Islamic Art section and held
exhibitions on Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.
Three-quarters of the visitors are foreigners, with about 1.5
million American and 1 million Chinese tourists.
Indicating that the sometimes violent "yellow vest" protests in
the final weeks of last year had not damaged tourism, the French
Center for National Monuments also reported record 2018 numbers,
with 10.2 million visitors, up 8 percent, to the 100 sites it
manages. The previous record was in 2014.
The Arc de Triomphe, despite being closed for two weeks last
month after being defaced by yellow vest protests against
government reforms, was France's most popular monument in 2018,
with 1.7 million visitors, followed by the Mont-Saint-Michel
island in Normandy, with 1.4 million.
Full-year tourist numbers for the Paris region are not yet
available, but in the first half of 2018 it booked a record
number of 17.1 million arrivals and said it was hoping for a
full-year record of 50 million.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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