Record visitor numbers to France's historic sites - before Olympics

France's major heritage sites saw a record-breaking year in 2023 measuring a 15% increase on 2022 - the previous record year. However, early reports suggest that the Paris Olympics has seen visits to heritage sites decline despite a strong rise in visitor numbers.

Paris taxi drivers demand payout for disruption during Olympics

Year-on-year visits to the French capital are up 20% due to the Paris Olympics, according data from to Les Echos, however figures for the rest of the country were already healthy before the Games.

The figures for the visits to French monuments, released by the Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN) earlier this year, show that the organisation was on “a very good trajectory,” its president Marie Lavandier told media.

The top five monuments

The five most popular monuments included three Parisian sites:

With 1.75 million visitors, the Arc de Triomphe was the most-visited monument of the year, with a 7% increase in attendance compared to 2022.

The Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, in Normandy, came in second with 1.52 million visitors – a 23% increase on the previous year.

Read more: Fee to visit Mont-Saint-Michel rejected for other ways to ease crowds

Sainte-Chapelle, located on the Ile de la Cité in the capital's 1st arrondissement, rounded out the top three with 1.36 million visitors, followed by the Pantheon (980,000) and the Château et remparts de la cité de Carcassonne (594,990).

The CMN pointed out that 18 of its monuments receive more than 100,000 visitors a year, compared with 16 in 2022, and two-thirds of the 110 listed monuments have seen an increase in visitor numbers.

Lesser-known monuments

For some lesser-known monuments, such as the Château de Fougères-sur-Bièvre (Loir-et-Cher), this has been dramatic – an increase of 95% to reach 30,726 visitors.

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy (Yvelines) saw a 58% increase, and the Château de La Motte-Tilly (Aube) a 56% hike.

Surprisingly, the Eiffel Tower is not, officially, a ‘national monument’. It is owned by the City of Paris, which has entrusted its management to a development company called Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.

Read more: France overtourism: five alternatives to the most popular destinations

Was the Olympic effect positive?

One of the more counterintuitive effects of the Paris Olympics is that visitor numbers  soared by 20% but visits to monuments declined.

Workers at the Louvre museum told Le Monde on August 5 that visitor numbers were actually down by between 20% and 30%, although management would only admit to a "slight drop".

Similarly, the Musée d'Orsay has registered a 29% drop in numbers and the Musée de l'Orangerie, 31%. Visitors to Disneyland Paris have reported a surprising lack of queues.

Nonetheless, Olympic planners are hoping that the Games' success will be measured long-term, as laid out in their 300-page report on the potential legacy of the Paris Games.

The report for the International Olympic Committee, which studied all of the venues used in the Games' 125-year history, found that of the 817 permanent venues that have been used for the Olympics, some 85 % are still in use, a proportion that rises to 92% for the 206 permanent venues used in the 21st-Century.

Relatively few new venues were commissioned for the Paris Olympics, and it is the hope of the the organising committee that the city's monuments themselves will be imbued with memories of the "spectacular visuals and strong local character" of the Games to boost visitor numbers for years to come