A study published last month analysed the time visitors spent at the Louvre Museum in Paris—which had a whopping 8.6m visitors in 2015, topping The Art Newspaper’s attendance figures report. Complied by Yuji Yoshimura, Anne Krebs and Carlo Ratti, the study used data collected in 2010 from visitors’ Bluetooth-activated mobile devices—an estimated 8% of them—to track how much time they spent in different parts of the museum’s Denon Wing, which houses star attractions like the Mona Lisa.
By measuring the “check-in” and “check-out” times in different spots, the study revealed areas where visitors stayed longer looking at works, such as the very popular Great Gallery with its Italian Renaissance paintings. But the two zones where visitors stayed for the longest periods of time were the site of the Winged Victory of Samothrace (around 19 minutes—they hypothesised that visitors sit on the stairs to rest) and—unsurprisingly—the ticket desk (around 16 minutes). In contrast, the rest of the areas had an average stay of three minutes.
The study also found that visitors who enter the museum earlier in the day tend to stay longer, but more surprisingly, that how long they stay doesn’t impact how many places in the Denon Wing they visit. It also found that there is a threshold for how much of a crowd visitors can take—at a certain density, they tend to stay for shorter periods of time—but in the Great Gallery (where tours often occur) visitors were undeterred by crowds. The researchers say that museums can use such studies in the future to help manage visitor traffic.