You've paid your entrance fee, you’ve stood in the queue and now, you’re finally there, standing in the presence of one of the greatest artworks of all time – the Mona Lisa. But wait, it’s tiny, it’s sitting behind bulletproof glass and there are a hundred people between you and it. You find yourself underwhelmed.
The Louvre, we’re told by Cormac Ó hEadhra on Drivetime, feels your pain and has plans to alleviate it – it's going to move Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work to an underground chamber. This will, apparently, improve "the world’s most disappointing viewing experience". A recent survey showed tourists did not enjoy the experience of going to see the Mona Lisa, with comments ranging from "never been so disappointed" to "torture".
Cormac spoke to the Irish Independent’s Travel Editor, Pól Ó Conghaile, to try to make sense of all this. After all, Cormac reasoned, if people don’t appreciate the Mona Lisa, what hope is there for them? It all depends on the context, Pól says:
"If you’re in there just after the doors open, or late at night and you actually have space to look at the painting, I would agree with you. But if you’ve been there at peak time and you walk into the room – and it’s a big room – and the painting is something like 30 inches tall and 20 inches wide and it’s got the bulletproof glass around it and it’s got the ropes cordoning it off and it’s got a scrum of people trying to take pictures and selfies and you literally have a few seconds to get a good view of it, so, look, I appreciate the art and I think, like many people, I do feel the experience is coming to a bit of a crunch."
Pól thinks a better idea than building a new underground viewing chamber would be for the Louvre to sell allotted viewing times and limit the number of people who are viewing it at any one time, so you could go to see it by appointment and be guaranteed not to be squashed by the hordes of selfie-takers. Would people pay extra for that? It’s something that Pól says we’re seeing a lot of at the moment:
"There’s sort of tourist attractions under numbers pressure all over the world. It could be Sagrada Familia, it could be the Cliffs of Moher, but they’re charging slightly different prices at different times of day because they want to encourage people to go when there’s less crowds."
What Uber calls surge pricing. Ugh. It’s quite a change from just a few years ago when tourist destinations were reeling from the effects of the Covid pandemic:
"We are really back. I mean, talk about a flip from the lockdowns of Covid where there was tumbleweed blowing through these tourist attractions and now you have, literally, we’re back talking about over-tourism again."
To tackle the newly-resurgent problem of over-tourism, some destinations are taking steps to reduce footfall, regardless of the time of day involved. Venice is one of those destinations and its tourist-reducing measures kicked in this week – they will be trialling a €5 entry fee to get into the city:
"So if you’re a day-tripper – this doesn’t apply to people spending the night in hotels – and you want to just drop in, have a walk around and leave, you’re going to be charged €5 for the pleasure."
Mind you, as Pól points out, someone getting off a cruise and having a €25 bellini in Harry’s Bar is hardly going to be deterred by a €5 entry fee. So, we should probably expect that price to go up. Sigh.
You can hear Cormac’s and Pól’s full chat by clicking above.