The underground Mona Lisa and the trouble with tourists

Famous attractions across the globe are grappling with the problems of overtourism as the travel industry bounces back from the pandemic.

Venice last week introduced an entry fee for day-trippers, and now the world's most famous artwork may be moved to an underground room at the Louvre, while a town in Japan is planning to block views of Mount Fuji.

'Perpetually crammed' gallery

Up to 10 million people a year visit the "Mona Lisa" at the Louvre, crowding into the Paris gallery where "she gazes out from behind 3in of bulletproof glass", said The Times. Many visitors queue for up to two hours to spend an allotted 30 seconds in front of the piece and "come away feeling cheated".

The painting's present room – the Salle des États – is "perpetually crammed", with up to 25,000 people on a busy day, some of whom have described the experience as "torture" in online reviews.

Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre, has suggested moving "Mona Lisa" to her own basement room, to make the visitor experience more satisfying.

"It's high time this queen of the Louvre was overthrown," said Laura Freeman, chief art critic of The Times. Most people don't even "look at the Mona Lisa or her smile, they just want a souvenir snap with their back to the picture", while ignoring the room's other "masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese". Banish her "to the basement, crank up the air-conditioning, stagger the tour groups and ban the cameras".

'Jostling tourists looking for likes'

In Japan, visitors have been "flocking" to the town of Fujikawaguchiko, at the foot of Mount Fuji, after travel bloggers began posting videos and pictures of the "epic" 3,776-metre landmark framed above a local supermarket, said The Telegraph.

The area outside the chain store has been "taken over by jostling tourists looking for likes", to the "dismay" of locals. Visitors often "lie in the road" or block the traffic as friends take photographs, with a 26-year-old Moroccan tourist hit by a car last week. Others have climbed onto roofs.

The "juxtaposition of the soaring volcano" and the "banal sight of one of Japan's most ubiquitous shops" have made the site so popular that the town, in the Yamanashi region, is "at its wits' end over the behaviour", said the BBC.

The local council is now set to erect a screen measuring 65ft wide and more than 8ft tall, to "deter social media-hungry snappers", said The Telegraph.

A move to 'long-term sustainability'

Other "strict new measures sought to curb overcrowding" around the world include the new €5 daytripper fee to enter Venice's historic centre, a ban on new hotels in Amsterdam, and a potential entry charge to the Plaza de España in Seville, said the i news site.

And Barcelona has removed a bus route from Google Maps in a bid to reduce large tourist numbers from a popular area of the city.

Many of the measures follow demands from local resident groups. "The protests in the Canary Islands are the most recent, and perhaps loudest, example of a tide of dissent against tourism that encroaches on the lives of residents".

Ultimately, said Travel and Tour World, combating overtourism will depend on prioritising "long-term sustainability over short-term gains, ensuring that travel remains a positive force in the world for generations to come".