I know, I know; a famous museum is crowded and insert some joke about France and protesting. Doesn't seem all that groundbreaking. But hear me out: what's going on with tourism these days?
Pick any big European city and its famous landmark, and I bet it's setting records on visitors.
- a 25% increase over the year before. "No other museum in the world has ever equaled this figure," the museum trumpeted in January.
The population is not growing that quickly, it's not like we're in some giant economic boom where people are suddenly realizing their lifelong travel dreams, and it's definitely not some weird spike in the public's intellectual curiosity around art.
So what is it in our society that's saying you have to see landmarks x, y, and z while traveling? We're destroying the actual appeal of some of these places by sardine-ing ourselves in just to tick the bucket list boxes.