Figures released on Wednesday show a 5 percent increase in the number of visits to France's 1,000 plus museums and galleries this year.

"/> Figures released on Wednesday show a 5 percent increase in the number of visits to France's 1,000 plus museums and galleries this year.

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LOUVRE

Museums and galleries enjoy bumper year

Figures released on Wednesday show a 5 percent increase in the number of visits to France's 1,000 plus museums and galleries this year.

Museums and galleries enjoy bumper year
Centre Pompidou-Metz by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra

27 million visitors are expected to have passed through the doors of the country’s cultural and historical institutions by the end of 2011.

Three of Paris’ most popular attractions accounted for more than half the visits, led by the Louvre with 8.5 million visitors.

The Pompidou Centre, which houses the  country’s leading contemporary art gallery, had 3.6 million visits and the newly-renovated Musée d’Orsay welcomed 2.9 million people.

Another star performer in 2011 was the new outpost of the Pompidou Centre in the eastern city of Metz. Opened in May 2010, the modern art museum has a distinctive roof designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.

Jacqueline Eidelman, a spokeswoman for the organization that manages the country’s cultural heritage, said three reasons had led to the increase, according to daily newspaper Le Figaro.

“The recent development of popular cultural tourism, family visits and a pricing policy that makes visiting museums less onerous,” she said. 

She added that making permanent collections free for 18 to 25 year-olds had also helped. Tickets for France’s leading museums and galleries cost between €8 and €10 ($10 to $13).

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TOURISM

New guide to Paris museums – showing only the nudes

There are lots of guides to the visual splendours of Paris' museums and art galleries - but for those with a short attention span comes a new one, showing only nude or erotic artworks.

New guide to Paris museums - showing only the nudes
Find your way straight to the most erotic works in Paris galleries. Photo: Guiseppe Cacace/AFP

The online guides to the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay museums are produced by the porn website Pornhub and provide a list of the best erotic artworks in each museum, plus directions of how to get there – so you don’t need to waste your time looking at paintings of people in clothes.

The Classic Nudes series has been ruffling some feathers since it was posted online earlier in July, with the Uffizi museum in Florence threatening to sue. Bosses at the Louvre have said only that they are ‘dismayed’, while the Musée d’Orsay has remained silent on the subject.

The guide for the Musée d’Orsay lists 11 erotic artworks, together with a tongue-in-cheek commentary, and a location for each piece within the museum.

The Sleep by Gustave Courbet. Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP

Among the works featured are;

  • Le déjeuner sur l’herbe by Edouard Manet (1863) – which features a group having a picnic in which the woman has lost her clothes (the men remain fully dressed in three-piece suits and ties).
  • Un combat des coqs by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1846) – a nude couple watching a cock fight (that’s cockerels fighting, just to be clear).
  • L’origine du monde by Gustave Courbet (1866) – more than 150 years after it was first painted, the intimate close-up of female genitalia is still making waves. In 2019 Facebook had to pay damages to a French teacher whose account was closed when he posted a picture of the famous artwork.

The guide for the Louvre includes:

Nude young Man by Hippolyte Flandrin. Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
  • Portrait of Madeleine by Marie Guillemine Benoist (1800) – groundbreaking in several senses, this painting is one of the few on the list by a woman, and shows a topless black woman, painted just six years after the abolition of slavery in France’s colonies. 
  • Diane sortant du bain by François Boucher (1742) – one of many paintings on the list showing women having a bath, this features the Greek goddess Diana and her favourite nymph apparently surprised by the artist in the process of drying off after a bath. 
  • Le Jeune homme nu by Hippolyte Flandrin (1835) – most of the flesh shown in both the galleries is female (because that’s the patriarchy for you) but here we have a more rare male nude, a study of a young man sitting and looking rather sad and pensive.

As is hopefully clear, the Pornhub guides are explicit in nature and not suitable for children.

Both museums, however, form a great day out for all the family and contain a lot of fully-clothed artwork too. At present both are operating reduced visitor numbers due to health rules, so advance booking to recommended.

IN DETAIL: When do France’s top tourist sites reopen?

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