The Louvre Is Closed as France Runs Neighbourhood Curfews

The Louvre is closed on 24 October, and 70,000 officers are on French streets, after neighbourhood curfews followed a night of riots. The Interior Ministry counted 550,000 people on the streets on 17 October, then 2,397 arrests. The orders that followed cover named squares and shopping streets, not entire cities, and neither London nor Washington has told people to stay away.

Visitors already in Paris on 24 October will find museums dark, metro stations shut and shopfronts nailed with plywood. People who cancel a hotel-only stay from abroad will, in most cases, eat the cost.

Dark Museums and Boarded Shopfronts on Saturday

Interior minister Laurent Nuñez said some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes would be out on 24 October, with helicopters, armoured vehicles and water cannon, after 60,000 officers failed to hold several city centres on 17 October. Prefects have allowed only union-organised marches in some places. Lyon, Nice and Montpellier banned demonstrations outright. In Paris the prefecture pulled the march off the Bastille-Nation axis and pushed it out toward the Porte d’Italie and the Porte de Vincennes after the first route was forbidden.

The Culture Ministry ordered an exceptional shutdown of the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Orangerie and the Musée national Picasso-Paris. City museums including Carnavalet, the Maison de Victor Hugo and the Petit Palais are closed. So are the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Fondation Cartier and the Bourse de Commerce. Art Basel Paris cut its Grand Palais run on the evening of 23 October. The Louvre’s own notice says it is exceptionally closed on 24 October and that Saturday reservations will be reimbursed automatically. Advance booking was already required from 17 October to 1 November.

The ministry has asked all institutions under its supervision to implement all necessary measures to ensure the safety of visitors, the protection of staff, and the preservation of artworks.

French Culture Ministry, statement coordinated with the Paris Police Prefecture, 23 October 2026

RATP, at the prefecture’s request, is closing 24 metro stations from 9 a.m. on 24 October, with Line 2 interrupted between Barbès-Rochechouart and Nation. No reopening hour has been posted. Central shopkeepers spent 23 October screwing plywood over glass after a Saturday in which looters moved faster than the police line.

Prefects Drew the Curfew Map Street by Street

Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu told parliament the local curfews were efficient and had helped restore calm after the first night. Paris police said public peace had returned in the locked-down zones and that the measures would last as long as necessary. Lecornu had already ruled out putting all of Paris under curfew. A state of emergency stayed on the table and was not declared.

CURFEWS IN FORCE INTO THE 24 OCTOBER WEEKEND

Orders change by the night. Lille, Douai, Wattignies and Denain ran a minors’ curfew from 20:00 to 06:00 on 19 and 20 October. Marseille banned gatherings across the city from noon to 20:00 on 19 October only. In Paris, undeclared gatherings remain banned from 20:00 around the Élysée, the Assembly, the Senate, the Champs-Élysées, the main stations and Place Vendôme, the streets where luxury stores were emptied on 17 October. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, in an update still current on 23 October, says the French government may impose partial and localised curfews in some areas at short notice and tells travellers to watch local media.

47 Percent Fewer New Hotel Bookings After 17 October

The rooms that sell France to the rest of the world were, with one loud exception, left standing. The booking pipe was not. Industry figures released on 21 October show new hotel bookings down 47 percent on 18 October, the Sunday after the riots. For stays from 19 to 25 October, 27 percent of bookings were cancelled against the same window a year earlier. Those are different piles of money: one is demand that never arrived, the other is a stay that was already on the books.

HOW THE HOTEL PIPE MOVED

• New bookings: Down 47 percent on 18 October, per the first industry tally published on 21 October.
• Stay-window cancels: 27 percent of bookings for 19 to 25 October cancelled against last year, same tally.
• Paris vs 2025: MKG Consulting still had Paris ahead of 2025, but the lead for 20 to 29 October shrank from 1.0 percentage point to 0.2 between 19 and 20 October, and the lead for 20 to 25 October shrank from 3.5 points to 1.9.
• Lyon cash: The Lyon Metropolis authority is releasing 10 million euros for hit businesses, with a one-stop desk at the chamber of commerce.

UMIH Prestige, the 4-star and 5-star arm of France’s main hospitality union, said shaken guests had started to cancel and that it was too early to price the damage. UMIH’s wider statement on 18 October put hotels, cafés and restaurants on the front line. “Our establishments are not punchbags,” the union said, and asked for simpler compensation because the first aid pots were aimed at looted shops. Christelle Chassagne, president of ADN Tourisme, the national federation of institutional tourism bodies, warned that violence in the centres of Nice, Paris and Lyon was chewing through traveller confidence, because people do not book a room in order to sit in it.

Limoges Town Hall, a Lyon Hotel Lobby and Untouched Palaces

The Interior Ministry’s 18 October tally is the working count: 550,000 demonstrators, 110,000 of them in Paris across 110 marches, 2,397 arrests, and 997 police officers and gendarmes hurt, seven of them seriously. Organisers put the crowd at 800,000. Justice minister Gérald Darmanin said 70 percent of those taken into custody were adults. Trade minister Serge Papin counted at least 3,000 shops damaged or looted. One protester died after a cardiac arrest in Paris. A crowd-control grenade blew a demonstrator’s hand off.

President Emmanuel Macron, in a Sunday address, said the country felt “anger and shame” after “unprecedented violence.” He vowed to “make examples if need be.” Nuñez offered to resign. Macron refused. Nuñez later told colleagues the police had lost control in some cities. “On Saturday, in some major cities, you couldn’t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn’t lost control,” he said. He blamed ultra-left groups and opportunistic looting on the edge of a march that had begun in high schools over staff shortages and broken buildings, then picked up a cost-of-living crowd, including yellow-vest networks from 2018 and 2019.

In Limoges, fire took the roof of the 19th-century town hall. Police later arrested a man on a security watch list, described as ultra-left, on suspicion of starting that blaze. In Lyon, demonstrators set fire to the tourism office on Place Bellecour and smashed its windows, then tried to keep firefighters back. Around 16:30, some 50 people pushed into the lobby of the Sofitel Lyon Bellecour on Quai Gailleton, smashed windows, doors and screens, and took watches and jewellery from display cases; the arcade boutique was stripped. No injuries were reported. Accor has not commented. The hotel was still taking bookings on 20 October.

Paris palaces a few streets from the looting reported no damage, no evacuation and no closure: Le Bristol on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, the Plaza Athénée on Avenue Montaigne, the Crillon, the Ritz, Le Meurice, the Mandarin Oriental. The Céline boutique on Avenue Montaigne was looted. No 5-star in Marseille, Bordeaux or Nice has been reported as hit, including the InterContinental at the head of Bordeaux’s Rue Sainte-Catherine, where the shops were.

ONE DAY IN 2026 AGAINST A WEEK IN 2023

The 2023 row is a week of riots after a police shooting. 17 October was a single Saturday. More shops were hit in that one day than in the 2023 week, on Papin’s count, and more officers were hurt. The Paris tourist office’s 20 to 25 percent international cancellation rate from early July 2023 has no matching public figure yet for this round, which is why the 21 October booking drop is the number hotels are actually using.

What a Cancellation Costs Without a Travel Ban

The FCDO has not advised against travel to France. The United States has not moved off its Level 2 exercise increased caution notice for terrorism and unrest, a rating last issued on 28 May 2025. That gap, between ugly pictures and an unchanged advisory, is where refunds go to die.

IF YOU WANT TO PULL THE TRIP

• Hotel-only stay: French consumer code article L221-28, 12°, gives no cooling-off right on accommodation booked for a set date. The rate rules apply, and force majeure is a hard sell while the hotel can still check you in.
• Package (flight plus hotel): Tourism code article L211-14, II, allows a free exit if unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances at the destination significantly affect the trip. Each file is judged on its own, and a country-level advisory against travel is the usual hook. That hook is not in place.
• Travel insurance: Insurers treat a voluntary cancel as disinclination to travel unless the FCDO moves to advise against all but essential travel for the place you are going. Some policies add disaster cover that still will not read a riot as a disaster.
• Louvre tickets for 24 October: The museum is refunding those automatically. That refund does not unlock a hotel night or a train.

Call the hotel before you burn the booking. Many will move a date even when they are not required to. Keep screenshots of prefecture orders if you later argue that a specific night was unusable. And stay out of the march. The FCDO’s standing line is that most demonstrations are peaceful, then tells you to leave if you are near one that is not, and to follow the police.

Police Can Demand ID Within Four Hours

Soldiers from Sentinelle, the anti-terror patrol that has walked French cities since 2015, were shifted onto sensitive sites so more police and gendarmes could work the crowd. Covering your face in public is already illegal in France, including balaclavas and any mask used to hide a face, and the fine runs to 150 euros. That law applies to tourists. Forcing someone else to hide a face is a separate crime.

THE WEEK THAT LED HERE

1. 17 October 2026: 550,000 people march on cost of living and school conditions; looting and arson follow in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Limoges and other cities; 2,397 arrests in the next day’s ministry tally.
2. 18 October 2026: New hotel bookings fall 47 percent; Macron addresses the country; yellow-vest organisers call an Act II for 24 October.
3. 19 October 2026: First partial curfews; students from the École du Louvre block the pyramid and the museum closes for the morning; Macron refuses Nuñez’s resignation.
4. 22 October 2026: Paris extends the 23:00 to 06:00 curfew at République and Les Halles through 06:00 on 26 October; the FCDO updates its France page on demonstrations.
5. 23 October 2026: The Culture Ministry closes national museums for Saturday; Art Basel Paris ends a day early; shopkeepers board glass in the centre.
6. 24 October 2026: 70,000 officers deployed; the Louvre and peer museums closed; 24 metro stations shut from 9 a.m.; union marches only in some cities.

You must be able to prove your identity when police ask, with a passport, a photocard licence or other government paper, or produce it at a station within four hours. Carry the passport, not a photo of it. RATP closures will shove airport runs onto remaining lines and taxis; RER B to Charles de Gaulle and Orly is the standing pickpocket and assault warning on the FCDO page even in a quiet week, so give it more time on a march day. Bars and restaurants inside Paris curfew zones were not ordered to close; the limit is being on the street in the two perimeters after 23:00 without an exemption.

31 October and 5 November Still Sit on the Calendar

Several curfews, including Paris, Bordeaux and Nice, are written through the morning of 26 October. Organisers have already pointed to 31 October, and a nationwide strike is listed for 5 November. Routes for those dates are not fixed. Prefects can add a square or drop one overnight, which is why the FCDO’s useful sentence is the boring one: check local media, then do what the police say.

Saturday tickets for the Louvre come back as cash. A hotel night booked for a set date does not. The 24 October problem for anyone already in France is a closed museum, a short metro map and a plywood street, not a country that has been declared off limits.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on travel conditions, curfews and booking rules in France, and it is for information only. It is not legal, insurance or travel-contract advice, and it does not tell you to cancel, keep or change any booking. Speak to your tour operator, insurer and, if needed, a qualified travel-law or consumer adviser before you spend or forfeit money. Arrest counts, curfew hours, museum hours and advisory levels are those published by the ministries, museums and foreign offices cited above, and they can change the same day.