As Parisians slowly return from their long summer breaks, locals are beginning to do what they do best: complaining. Montmartre, one of Paris’s most visited neighbourhoods, has become the centre of a growing backlash against overtourism. ‘Behind the postcard: locals mistreated by the Mayor’, reads one banner in English. Another declares: ‘Montmartre residents resisting’. The neighbourhood around Sacré-Cœur, once Paris’s bohemian hilltop village, says it’s had enough.
Tourists aren’t destroying Paris, they’re underwriting it. If Montmartre wants to see what life looks like without so-called ‘Disneyfication’, it should try a weekend without tourist euros
With 11 million visitors a year, more than the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre has become the prime example of what locals call the ‘Disneyfication’ of Paris. Residents complain that pavements are blocked by tour groups, tourists gather noisily outside bars and stop in the street for selfies. Shops selling groceries have vanished, replaced by bubble-tea stalls, clothes shops, and ice-cream outlets. Dodgy-looking touts sell Eiffel Tower keyrings or pester passers-by to take tuk-tuk rides.
Some Parisians are giving up entirely on the neighbourhood, according to France24. ‘I told myself that I had no other choice but to leave’, says Olivier Baroin, who’s selling his flat after a new pedestrian-only zone made it impossible to drive to his home. An association called Vivre à Montmartre warns the area is becoming an ‘open-air theme park’ where tourists come to play at being Parisians while actual Parisians are squeezed out.
The phenomenon isn’t confined to Montmartre. The Louvre logged almost nine million visitors in 2024, more than double what the building was designed to handle. Museum staff staged a wildcat strike last month over chronic overcrowding and crumbling conditions. Paris welcomed close to 50 million tourists last year, a record high. And more are on the way: cheap flights, viral Instagram spots, and a booming global middle class have made the French capital irresistible. Locals complain that historic neighbourhoods risk becoming ‘zombie cities’: picture-perfect but hollowed out, their residents driven away by crowds and rising rents. ‘Zombie city’ is a melodramatic way of saying ‘too many ice-cream shops.’
The truth is that Montmartre has been a stage set since Picasso’s day. The artists were replaced by café singers, the café singers by souvenir sellers, and now the souvenir shops by bubble tea cafés.
We live in the Marais, which has endured its own transformation. I’ve tolerated the crowds for years because it’s part of the bargain you make for living somewhere beautiful and very central. I accept that I’ll be stopped every few weeks and asked for directions to the Picasso museum. I nod politely when an American tourist in a beret compliments my English. I smile, give directions, and carry on.
But it is getting worse. There are no longer any bakeries in our immediate vicinity. Over the years, one by one, they’ve been taken over by clothing outlets or boutique hotels. Linen trousers can cost more than a week’s groceries. We must now walk ten minutes to get bread. Ten minutes. It sounds absurd, but we were spoilt.
And then there are the headphone herds: tour groups 30-strong drifting behind guides waving plastic flags, clogging narrow pavements as they stare up at the façades like visitors in an open-air museum. I dodge selfie sticks on my way to pick my daughter up from school. My street sometimes feels less like Paris and more like the set of a TikTok video. One of our close friends in the neighbourhood tells us that sometimes she thinks twice about going out on weekends the streets are so busy.
It’s easy to sympathise with Montmartre’s frustration, until you remember what the alternative looks like. Without tourist money, much of Paris would be very different. Those queues outside trendy cafés and galleries, the people elbowing each other for Instagram shots, they’re the reason the restaurants, museums, independent galleries, theatres, and many of the more interesting shops survive. If you doubt it, take a train to almost any French provincial town that isn’t on a tourist map. When the shops shut at five and the bistro turns into a kebab stand, the romance fades quickly.
Paris has always been a fantasy. That’s why they come. For Hemingway, for Amélie, for the croissants, and now for Emily in Paris. Tourists aren’t destroying Paris; they’re underwriting it. If Montmartre wants to see what life looks like without the so-called ‘Disneyfication’, it should try a weekend without tourist euros. The cafés would close, the souvenir stalls would shutter, and the quiet would be deafening.
Of course, the complaining will never stop. Complaining is part of Paris’s cultural heritage. Tourists gripe that Parisians are rude, and Parisians sigh that tourists are unbearable. The truth is that they need each other. Paris without crowds would be Lyon with better lighting.
I’ll keep dodging headphone herds in the Marais. I’ll keep trekking ten minutes for bread. And yes, I’ll keep smiling when I’m asked the way to the nearest museum. But when I hear of locals leaving entirely or putting up banners lamenting the city’s ‘Disneyfication’, I can’t help but laugh. Because Parisians aren’t fighting to save some lost authenticity. They’re just furious the rest of the world wants a piece of it.
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