A closed Paris is a headache for locals. But Saturday was a headache for first-time visitors to Louisiana, who traveled here for an NFL football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers to find the Louvre museum closed and the Arc de Triomphe surrounded by police vans. “Pretty much everything is closed,” said Terri Wallis, 65, a school principal and Saints fan from Baton Rouge, who was visiting with three generations of her family. “You know, we’re not rich people. This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip to come see the Mona Lisa. So it’s a little disappointing.” French authorities deployed up to 70,000 police officers and gendarmes to prevent a repeat of last weekend, when mass protests degenerated into arson, looting and other violence. Authorities in Paris and other cities hit hard by the unrest imposed curfews and temporary restrictions on gatherings. In Paris, fears of another outbreak of violence led to the closure of several cultural institutions, including the Louvre, Grand Palais, Orsay, Orangerie and Picasso museums. Wallis and his family were browsing a grocery store on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the city’s largest boulevard, where traffic was light and private security guards were stationed at the entrances to most businesses. Along the street, shops and boutiques were boarded up to protect them from looters. With major cultural sites closed, Paris felt less chaotic than closed on a slate-gray Saturday afternoon. At the Louvre, a chain stretched across the door of the museum’s pyramidal entrance. The Tuileries gardens were also closed, due to strong winds, a sign said. While Notre-Dame Cathedral was open, Wallis said the lines outside were extremely long, as tourists flocked to one of the few options they had left. A midday bike ride through Paris revealed an eerily empty city. The Place de la Bastille, famous as the site of uprisings during the French Revolution and, more recently, the site of student-led protests, had been declared off-limits to protesters by Paris authorities on Saturday. A police phalanx, backed by a water cannon truck and officers on motorcycles, kept the square clear. Police warned over a loudspeaker that anyone trying to organize an illegal protest would be fined 135 euros, about $150. “It is not possible to stay here regardless of the reason you are here,” the voice over the loudspeaker said. “I ask you to leave the square.” Authorities pushed protesters toward the city’s southern outskirts, a last-minute change to the approved march route that organizers said was calculated to sow disorder in their ranks. It was not yet clear whether this would prevent a repeat of the arson and looting that broke out in Paris last weekend. Wallis said he considered canceling the trip after seeing those riots. But the Saints-Steelers game, the first NFL game played in Paris, will take place as scheduled Sunday at the Stade de France, a stadium in suburban Paris just a few miles from where the high school protest movement began last month. In those demonstrations, students set up barricades in front of their schools to protest dilapidated buildings, a shortage of teachers and a college admissions process that many consider opaque and unfair. Chelsea Bertrand, who was with the Wallis family and works at an elementary school in Baton Rouge, said that as an educator, she was impressed by the way the French students had mobilized, even if it affected their visit. “You teach them to stand up for what is right,” he said. “The fact that they are actually positively advocating (as it originally started) for their rights and what they think is best for education, I think is amazing.” The women said they had not witnessed any discomfort and were not concerned for their safety. Wallis said she marveled at how “indifferent” some people seemed to the disorder, pointing to a viral video on social media that appeared to show a couple relaxing at a cafe last weekend while bonfires burned outside. “I thought, ‘Okay, those are the French,’” Wallis said. “The city is burning and you are sitting there.”
