Paris’s Louvre museum said on Thursday, November 27, it would raise ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, meaning US, British and Chinese tourists among others will have to pay $37 to get in.
The museum told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the 45% price hike aims to boost annual revenues by up to $23 million to fund structural improvements at the world’s most-visited art museum, which is reeling from the daylight theft of priceless treasures last month.
From 2026, visitors from outside the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway will have to pay €32 – an extra €10 – from January 14, the museum and staff unions said after the measure was approved at a museum board meeting.
Well I mean they didn’t pay for most of the stuff in there in the first place
They spend over £50,000,000/year on care, research, and conservation.
A significant portion of what we know about the ancient world is a direct result of their research sharing and activities; for example when the Rosetta Stone was in French hands they kept it to themselves, when it was in Egypt they did nothing with it, but when it came to Britain it was shared with research departments across Europe as well as in Britain, resulting in our ability today to read hieroglyphics and demotic script.
Think about that for a second: if the Rosetta Stone had been left in Egypt, there’s every possibility that Egyptians today would still have no idea about most of their own history or how to read their own ancient texts. You might dismiss this as paternalistic or white-savioury, but it’s true nonetheless.
Even as recently as last year we had researchers finding things like https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/babylonian-map-world-0021631 that simply wouldn’t have happened without the British Museum’s work. So, I’m inclined to cut them some slack.