Appreciate the Art

Visit Museums

French museums are among the most important in the world —Indeed, France is home to three of the ten most visited art museums in the world: the Louvre Museum, the Pompidou Center, and the Musée d’Orsay; and four if we add the château de Versailles, which can also be considered a museum. The Louvre Museum is even the most visited in the world, with about 10 million visitors per year.

In France, museums and culture are perceived as economic attractors and are considered to be able to promote local economic development. And the State invests massively in culture thus contributing to strengthening its influence. Just to give you an idea, in 2018, culture in the French economy is nearly 2.3% of GDP, 80.000 cultural enterprises, and 670.000 jobs, or 2.5% of the labor force (source: Ministère de la Culture).

French people are very much into the arts, and visiting a museum is a very common activity to do during the weekend. Also, as the museums’ funding remains public in France, this provides better access to cultural activities for everyone. France has even created the “Culture Pass” —which gives all 18-year-olds across the country €300 to spend on art, music, theatre, and more— to provide younger people with wider access to France’s culture.