PARIS — Crowds thronged the underground shopping center of the Louvre museum here early Sunday evening. It seemed like business as usual only two days after an intruder wielding a machete had been shot by a French soldier there.
At 5:15 p.m. Paris time, there was no visible evidence of ramped-up security. Two guards, as usual, inspected people’s bags in the passageway from the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station. No military presence was noted, but numerous patrols comprised of three police officers steadily made their rounds along the sweeping hallways and stopped to survey the vast atrium leading into the museum, Printemps department store and other shops. It’s there that the grand, inverted I.M. Pei glass pyramid is showcased, as well.
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The mall, called the Carrousel du Louvre, is home to dozens of stores, which also include Lacoste, Sandro, Caudalie, Fragonard, Jo Malone, L’Occitane and Apple.
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A salesman at Printemps said he hadn’t noticed any change in security or in visitor footfall on Sunday, the day after the shopping center and museum had reopened to the public following the attack. He explained that many of the customers at Printemps are visitors to Paris and therefore many probably weren’t even aware of the Friday event, which France’s President François Hollande ascribed a “terrorist nature.”
Another salesman in a store nearer to where the attack took place — by the entryway from the Tuileries Garden, which remained shut and had guards standing sentinel — agreed he hadn’t observed more security.
“I was afraid there was going to be [a huge] impact right away,” he said, regarding the number of shoppers. The salesman added that there did seem to be slightly fewer people in the mall than typically on a Sunday, especially the first Sunday of a month when many of France’s museums, including the Louvre, are open free of charge.
He said there’s “not an enormous change — not like after Charlie Hebdo or the 13th,” referring to the terrorist attacks of January 2015 on the satirical newspaper and of Nov. 13, 2015, at the Bataclan concert hall that left scores dead. (The former prompted the deployment of military personnel and increased police presence to protect sensitive parts of France. Called Operation Sentinelle, it was reinforced after the November attacks. Overall, France’s state of emergency has been extended through July.)
“Then, one saw it right away,” said the salesman, of the drop in traffic.
The most recent terrorist incident in France was last July, when a truck rammed into Bastille Day revelers in the southern city of Nice that left more than 85 dead and injured hundreds.
The scene in the Louvre’s shopping center Sunday differed drastically from that on Friday morning, when after being told that he could not enter the area with his two knapsacks a man tried to attack a soldier with a machete and reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”). Another soldier opened fire and shot the suspect, who reports have identified as Abdallah El-Hamahmy, a 29-year-old Egyptian national, five times.
No explosives were ultimately found in bags of the man, who was questioned for the first time by French authorities in his hospital bed on Sunday morning.
Industry sources expect the fallout from the attack will be minimal on retail.
“The damage seems contained, as there was no fatality on either side,” said Luca Solca, managing director at Exane BNP Paribas, who nevertheless characterized the event is a negative for the luxury sector. “The bad thing is that this incident happened in one of the most iconic Parisian locations — the Louvre. Foreigners may wonder about security in France, and could pause on their plans to visit the French capital.”
“I think internationally, it’s yet another reminder to foreign visitors that European cities — and perhaps Paris in particular — are risky places to go,” agreed George Wallace, chief executive officer of consultancy MHE Retail Europe. “I suspect in terms of [the recent event’s] impact on people’s behavior, it’s going to be quite limited domestically.”
Tourist spending in France had been on the rebound. It recorded an underlying pickup of 21 percent in December against a weak comparable figure. That contributed to Europe’s third successive month of positive growth, at 4.6 percent, according to an analysis of the latest Global Blue data by Barclays.
Local press largely downplayed the Friday attack. None of the main French newspapers’ weekend editions devoted their covers to the news. On page one, Le Monde teased it with a headline, Le Figaro made reference to it with a photograph and Libération made no mention at all. Neither did The New York Times’ international edition, the Financial Times nor Le Journal du Dimanche. Instead, the race for France’s presidency stole much of the limelight.