Thieves steal crown jewels in 4 minutes from Louvre Museum

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Acknowledged. Saw the change on AP and made an edit. Original comment was written an hour or two ago.

They're already working on doing exactly that. The construction work that the thieves hid with is to restore all the previous doors of the museum so they can start being used as entrances again to reduce the strain on the I.M. Pei pyramid, the modern entrance of the Louvre. Coupled with that, they're building the first temporary exhibit space of the museum, with an adjacent permanent exhibit space. That permanent exhibit's subject? Da Vinci and the Mona Lisa, with a special ticket to visit only that already in the plans.

In 10 years, bus full of tourists will go straight to the pyramid, then straight to the Da Vinci exhibit, take their goddamn selfie, and leave. The rest of the visitors will mostly enter through the historical entrances and never interact with those throngs of Mona Lisa lookie loos.

The Louvre is doing exactly what makes the most sense; they're not stupid, they're just not very fast, as is usual for a museum.

When I visited the Louvre it was absolutely wild to me how many people were just there for the Mona Lisa. I took a look at it in person because of course I did, but I don't think it was anywhere close to the most interesting piece the museum has on display (I preferred the classical sculptures), nor even the best painting. It seems like such a waste for people to fawn over that one painting and pretty much ignore all the other masterpieces you can see there.

It’s already the case.

In which case visitor numbers won’t swell

It's already like that, and it sucks. I remember a time when you could spontaneously decide "I'm going to the museum today!" then go there, wait a bit in line and get in. Now you have to book it weeks in advance, then get in line anyway, or show up without a reservation and be told the museum is full.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me pricing everything at its actual correct price is the best way; do not subsidize consumption or production, do not protect producers. All of these things are firstly political footballs and secondly only act to consume wealth inefficiently (which is to say, to mis-allocate resources).

Then work on making everyone as wealthy as possible, by encouraging economic growth, so we have as much personal, individual wealth as possible, and so can buy as much of what we want or need as possible.

The Louvre ticket price is around $18 right now. I think they could stand to increase it a bit without pricing out “everyone but the rich”.

Just do the classic developing country thing and charge non-french people significantly more. 2x the price if you live outside paris, 5x the price if you live outside of France, and 20x the price if you live outside the EU.

From the Web-site of the Louvre:

  Admission is free for the following visitors:
  
  Under 18s
  Proof of ID required.
  
  Under 26 year-old residents of the European Economic Area (EU, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein)
  Proof of ID and residency required.

  All visitors
  On the first Friday of the month after 6 p.m. (except in July and August)

> Access by lottery with affordable ticketing would be more democratic than access by riches over others by pricing out working class visitors

Do both. Lottery tickets the day of. Advance-rate tickets at a premium price. Mix and match with a non-EU premium for both.

I don't know about the Louvre, but national amenities usual charge more to tourists. You can rise tourist fares as much as needed. They aren't poor nationals, and it's their number which is causing problems.

The UK's Natural History Museum is quite instructive. No staff anywhere apart from where money gets taken for food and souvenirs. Free entry to hordes and hordes of children with parents and grandparents in tow.

So how do they manage it?

There is ticket booking, which is done in advance or else there is a queue. Once in, you are just following the same walk as everyone else to see the dinosaurs - what else?!? After the dinosaurs have been seen people can tire themselves out seeing some of the rest of the museum, but most don't see a lot else and head for the gift shop before going home.

At the Louvre they have the slight problem that the hordes are there to see that one painting, the one that isn't exactly massive. Everyone knows exactly what it looks like before taking the pilgrimage. Really they should just get rid of it and put it in on a regional tour indefinitely, so as to share the tourist money elsewhere.

I agree. But not at the cost of the working class workers.

Keep it up, and you ensure only foreigners and rich people will be able to visit important or desirable things in your own country. I live in Lisbon, and see this happening all the time.

They weren’t caught. (Yet.)

There are already such exhibitions, when I went there, it was related to dress from designer, although gorgeous to see them in the middle of historical rooms, sometimes I wondered if there were from the era.

I feel like you're trying to be sarky with the "#winWin", but genuinely yes. If the tradeoff is that someone gets to feel important and have a plaque put up with their name on it, and something good but expensive happens which otherwise could not, everyone absolutely does win. Even better than taxes because it's a specific goal and consensual on all sides.

When the Notre Dame burned down, it became a competition between the billionaires who was going to be the bigger donor.

I think at the rebuilt cathedral, there's a plaque honoring the owners of Louis Vuitton, and I don't know who else...

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Unless the artifacts were stolen-to-order for a client who wants them as-is. It happens, paintings get stolen and it's not like those can be melted down.

Crown jewels stolen. Future jewel thieves most impacted.

If the thieves were only after the melt value then there are easier things to steal. It seems more likely that these particular items were "stolen to order" for a specific private collector.