France’s capital is one of the globe’s most favored and famous tourist sites thanks to the city’s architectural excellence, rich cultural heritage, and mouth-watering cuisine. With its stunning scenery and world-class museums no matter what season you choose to visit, the City of Light will fascinate you. For certain if you spend a day or a week in Paris, you’ll want to come back and explore the city even more.
The City of Light has long been a nickname for Paris, with most individuals assuming it arises from the bright lights of the Eiffel Tower that illuminate the Seine’s banks at night, as well as the city’s gleaming alleyways.
That being said, the nickname came from the mid-seventeenth century, when Louis XIV decided to regain social confidence in rule of law by massively increasing the number of police officers in the city and replacing candles on nearly every busy street in Paris. The city became known as La Ville-Lumière or ‘The City of Light’ after that.
It might just be the city’s winding valley, the monuments strewn about the streets, or the charming cobblestone lanes, but you’d never guess that Paris receives nearly 40 million visitors each year.
The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, fashion, the Moulin Rouge, and pastries are all famous in Paris. The city of Paris is known for its scenic, graceful, and bold romanticism.
Nobody knows but The Louvre Museum is the world’s most visited museum, with over nine million tourists each year. It is best known for housing the Mona Lisa, but it also houses over 35,000 works of art.
France, as being one of the world’s most popular tourism destinations vacation spots, is particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects. According to preliminary estimates, the impact on tourism alone will cost the French economy up to 40 billion euros. Foreign tourists spent 57.9 billion euros in France in 2019, with the worth of French tourists opting for a “staycation” estimated at 110 billion euros.
A couple of foreign visitors are roaming the streets of Paris this season, putting an end to a desperate hope that the city’s top tourist spot would recover from last year’s pandemic-related dissertation. The lack of mostly foreign visitors has resulted in a 60% drop in hotels earnings.
It is not uncommon for half of its tourists to be foreign people. Francois Frassier, a general manager at the Compagnie des Alpes, which possesses the museum and theme parks, says it’s down to 10% this year.
Travel guidelines in France have been loosened away during the summer period. Countries are now color-coded based on whether they must take a Covid-19 test before actually arriving, have an urgent purpose to visit or be quarantined. After a 9 month-long break due to the pandemic, the Eiffel Tower officially opened in mid-July, but it has only had 13,000 tourists per day nearly half of its regular amount.
Even though culture in France is still the most favored segment by the administration, the crisis has prompted experts in the field to draw attention to this reversal. It’s ridiculous to damage culture for the sake of population health and economy, especially when you consider how deeply culture is stitched into both.
