As Europe’s heat wave grows in intensity, some museums on the continent are advertising themselves as refuges from the high temperatures — particularly as few households are air-conditioned.
In London, the Imperial War Museum boasted on Instagram that it was a space of “salvation” from the heat in the British capital, offering air conditioning and a cafe stocked with cold drinks alongside its exhibits on military history.
And in Paris, the Museum of the History of Immigration announced that entry to its main exhibitions would be free through Friday to give the public access to its cool halls.
For museums with either air conditioning or naturally cool stone buildings, the heat is an opportunity to “actively promote themselves as cool spaces,” said Ben Melham, the director of Mortice Consulting, a British firm that advises museums on operational issues. Given that heat waves are now such a regular occurrence on the continent, the sweltering temperatures can provide a chance “to get visitors though the door who wouldn’t have come otherwise,” he added.
Constance Rivière, the director of the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris, the institution that includes the immigration museum, said that she had decided to make entry to the museum’s exhibitions free after seeing Parisians flock to places like hotel lobbies to cool down. Her museum’s hallways are kept at 22 to 23 degrees Celsius, or about 71 to 73 degrees Fahrenheit, to protect the artwork, she said, far cooler than the highs of 100 or above that the French capital has experienced this week.
On Wednesday, 540 people visited the immigration museum, Rivière said — 200 more than the previous week.
Not all museums have been able to offer such oases, though. Major institutions like the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum in Paris, have closed because of the heat, while others have reduced their opening hours.
The British Museum in London is closing at 6 p.m. on Friday rather than its usual 8:30 p.m. and has also shuttered some of its galleries, including rooms containing artifacts from ancient Greece and Rome. Most objects are in temperature-controlled showcases, but there is no air conditioning across the whole building, making some of its galleries uncomfortably hot for visitors and staff, the museum said.
In Paris, the Louvre Museum is closing at 4 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. through Saturday because of the heat.
Melham, the director of the British consulting firm, said the Louvre would not have closed early unless it were a necessity, given the loss in revenue from ticket sales. “Knowing the commercial impact of that, it’s a really hard decision to make,” he said.
Theaters are also having to adapt.
In London, “Avenue Q,” the puppet-based West End musical, on Thursday introduced three-minute “hydration breaks” for its cast so that performers can drink water, according to the Stage, Britain’s main theater newspaper, which said the breaks had been “inspired” by those at the World Cup.
And the open-air Globe Theater canceled three performances this week, including some of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” because of the high temperatures.
