A Record Number of Visits to the Louvre in Paris. And The Reason is ... Beyonce

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, broke all ticket office records last year with more than 10 million people viewing its Paris collection of fine arts and antiquities, boosted by foreign tourists and the interest in Beyoncé and Jay-Z's music video filmed there, reported the Guardian.

The 10.2 million people who came to the museum in 2018 marked a 25% rise in visitors, beating the previous record of 9.7 million visitors in 2012. It is the highest number for a museum of its kind, ahead of the National Museum of China and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The rise was due in part to international tourists returning to Paris after large numbers stayed away in the years after the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. Foreigners made up almost three-quarters of visitors to the Louvre; the biggest number of foreign visitors were from the US, followed by China. But 2.5 million French people also visited, including increasing numbers of schoolchildren, as outings to tourist sites had been limited after the terrorist attacks that struck the country in recent years.

The Louvre has managed to maintain its high numbers of young visitors - more than 50% are under 30 - and was helped by the success of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's video for Apeshit last summer, which was shot in the museum and featured key works, including the Mona Lisa and Jacques-Louis David's masterpiece, The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine.

The video, viewed more than 150m times online, was seen as an important comment on the representation of power in art, and on race and colonialism, as well as being a conversation starter for young visitors. It led the museum to create a special visitor guide based on the video, which was a success...