Paris

With Asian visitors still largely absent, major Paris museums struggled to regain pre-pandemic numbers in 2022, despite a huge recovery from the previous year, official figures showed on Jan. 5.

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, welcomed 7.8 million people last year, a 170-percent increase on 2021, but still down 19 percent on 2019.

The open-air booksellers of Paris, a fixture along the banks of the Seine for centuries, are seeing their numbers dwindle after two years of Covid, with stalls going empty thanks to a dearth of local and foreign customers.

Approximately 6 million tourists and Parisians have visited the wrapped Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The installation, whose dismantling began in early October, was Bulgarian Christo's dream project, which his nephew, Vladimir Yavashev, carried out a year after his death.

Revenues for Paris are estimated at about 235 million euros.

The holiday was marked with precautionary measures due to the coronavirus.
About 5.000 members of all branches of the army took part in the parade as part of the Republic Day, and the parade was followed by the President of the state Emmanuel Macron, the state leadership of France and about 25.000 citizens.

The Eiffel Tower will reopen on July 16 after several months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Paris landmark's operator said on Thursday.

Visitor numbers will be limited to 10,000 a day to meet social distancing requirements, fewer than half of their pre-Covid levels, operator Sete told AFP.

French fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who died earlier this week at the age of 98, was laid to rest on Jan. 2 in a private ceremony at Paris's Montmartre Cemetery, his family told AFP.

In accordance with his wishes, Cardin was buried in a black coffin with a sword he had designed, the handle

France is to mobilise 100,000 police and gendarmes on New Year's Eve to break up parties and enforce a curfew imposed to combat coronavirus.

The extra security also aims at halting the torching of cars that often takes place on the final night of the year.

France has confirmed 2.6m Covid-19 cases, the fifth highest total in the world, and more than 64,000 deaths.

Paris officials on Sunday removed the tall metal barriers surrounding the square in front of Notre-Dame cathedral, offering visitors a close-up look at the gothic monument for the first time since the devastating fire that struck last year.

Perched over the gaping roof of Notre-Dame, a crane stands idle above the silent Paris cathedral, where repair work has ground to a halt one year after the monstrous blaze that nearly destroyed one of the world's most revered monuments.

G-7 finance ministers in the euro area will hold a conference call Wednesday to "coordinate their responses" to the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy, said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.

"We will have that meeting by phone—because you need to avoid travelling too much - for the G7 to coordinate its response," Le Maire told France 2 television.