Protesters blocked the entrance to the Louvre in Paris on Monday, as French authorities scrambled to stem public discontent fuelling mass cost-of-living demonstrations that over the weekend spilled over into some of the worst street violence in recent years.
Protesters blocked the entrance to the Louvre in Paris on Monday, as French authorities scrambled to stem public discontent fuelling mass cost-of-living demonstrations that over the weekend spilled over into some of the worst street violence in recent years.
President Emmanuel Macron ordered a security review as the country's interior minister admitted that the police "had lost control" during the weekend's unrest.
Undeterred, the Yellow Vests movement which organised the weekend's rallies called for a new round of protests Saturday.
Italy, Spain and Portugal, where anger over rising prices has also led to protests, were keeping a nervous eye on the developments after smaller clashes broke out in Milan over the weekend and protests about housing costs persisted in Spanish cities.
Some half a million people turned out across France to protest the surging cost of living, a culmination of four weeks of protests that began with high school students demanding better conditions at their schools.
What started as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violence in some places, as masked groups on the sidelines of the protests attacked law enforcement, broke into town halls and other public buildings, setting many of them ablaze, looted shops, and set fire to cars, bicycles and scooters on the streets.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez offered to resign on Monday after more than 2,500 people were arrested and nearly 1,000 members of the security forces injured. Protesters were also hurt, with one demonstrator's hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade.
"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," Nunez said.
Macron refused Nunez's resignation, even as he acknowledged security and intelligence failures in the government response, despite the some 60,000 law enforcement personnel deployed across the country on Saturday.
Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of whom were adults, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said Monday.
More than 2,000 shops were expected to have been affected by the weekend's violence across France, with damage running into "hundreds of millions of euros", according to chamber of commerce president Alain Di Crescenzo.
In an address to the nation Sunday evening, Macron slammed the "unbridled" violence and said local authorities would be able to ban -- "if necessary" -- certain rallies in coming days.
But he stopped short of announcing drastic measures, such as a state of emergency or curfew.
City authorities in Marseille said on Monday that public gatherings would be banned from noon to 08:00 pm (1000-1800 GMT).
The public discontent showed no signs of subsiding on Monday, with demonstrators blocking the entrance to Paris's iconic Louvre Museum, the most visited in the world.
“We are proud to announce that we are blocking the world’s largest museum,” reads a leaflet seen by AFP and displayed near the Louvre, which was unable to open its doors as normal at 9am. Around 30,000 people visit the Paris museum every day.
According to management, the action, led by around 50 students from the École du Louvre, is not directly linked to the museum, which is simply being used “as an echo chamber”. However, the date coincides exactly with the first anniversary of the spectacular burglary that plunged the world’s most visited museum into a deep crisis.
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According to the CGT trade union, which supports the action but is not taking part, the museum will remain closed at least “until noon”.
Students from the École des Beaux-Arts are also involved in the action, which follows the high school protests that began in mid-September and comes two days after the major nationwide mobilisation against the rising cost of living, which descended into chaos in many French cities.
In their leaflet, the protesting students do not specifically refer to this action but frame their blockade as part of “the fight for the right to study, work and live freely in good conditions”.
Located within the museum grounds, the École du Louvre is a higher education institution offering courses in art history, archaeology, epigraphy, anthropology and museology, according to its website.
Over the past year, access to the Louvre has been disrupted several times by staff strikes that began after the October 19th, 2025 burglary and are demanding better working conditions and pay. The strike notice filed by the unions in December 2025 has still not been formally withdrawn, as no final agreement has been reached with the Ministry of Culture.
READ MORE: After a year in turmoil, the Paris Louvre faces uncertain future
Rising prices have fuelled anger in France, where diesel prices have jumped nearly 40 percent and petrol by 25 percent since March and where food prices have risen by 25 percent since 2021.
The unrest in France has flared just months before a key presidential election where centrist Macron cannot stand again and Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate for the National Rally party, is riding high in the polls.
Ministers have blamed "ultra-left" groups for the violence, while Le Pen claimed that the party of her far-left rival for the presidency, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, had "legitimised the violence".
The left has accused Macron of ignoring protesters' demands, while the right is calling on him to take a firmer line.
With costs of living rising across Europe, smaller demonstrations have broken out in other countries.
During the weekend, clashes broke out on the sidelines of a cost-of-living demonstration in Milan, with Mayor Giuseppe Sala warning: "I'm very worried because it's a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself."
In Spain, hundreds of tents have occupied Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square since September, when the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her lifelong flat sparked nationwide protests in a country with soaring housing costs.
Dozens of tents have also sprung up in Portugal's main cities of Lisbon and Porto, with protesters demanding action over rising costs of housing.