PERPIGNAN, France (Reuters) – The mayor of the French city of Perpignan on Tuesday defied the government’s COVID-19 restrictions and reopened four of the city’s museums.
“We cannot stay locked down all our lives,” the mayor, Louis Aliot, said inside Perpignan’s Rigaud museum, where, for the first time in months, members of the public were admiring artwork including a portrait of Marie Antoinette, the queen executed by guillotine in the French Revolution.
The French government has forbidden restaurants, museums, cinemas and theatres from opening to the public as it tries to contain the new coronavirus, which has contributed to the deaths of more than 79,000 people in France since the pandemic began.
But there is growing impatience from businesses forced to close, and from right-wing politicians, for President Emmanuel Macron to ease the restrictions.
The Perpignan mayor is an ally of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party who, opinion polls indicate, will be Macron’s main challenger in the presidential election scheduled for next year.
Responding to Aliot’s decision to reopen the museums, the representative of the French interior ministry in Perpignan applied to a court for an order forcing them to close again. A decision from the court is pending.
At the Rigaud museum, visitors perusing the collection of portraits of French queens described the opportunity to walk around a museum again as a breath of fresh air.
“We’ve been deprived too much, too frustrated by the lack of pleasure, culture, lack of joie-de-vivre,” said one visitor, a pensioner who gave her name as Francoise. “So here we are.”
(Reporting by Alexandre Minguez; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
