France evacuates Louvre, Versailles palace after security alerts

By Gaspard Sebag

Two of Paris’s most popular tourist destinations were evacuated and shut down for security reasons, a day after the fatal stabbing of a teacher in northern France that President Emmanuel Macron described as an Islamist terror attack.

The Palace of Versailles was evacuated Saturday following a bomb threat, the local prefect said on social media. A Louvre spokesperson said earlier in the day that the site was made aware of a security risk for the museum and its visitors, and had decided to close down the museum.

France raised its security alert level to the maximum on Friday and a spokesperson for Macron announced the deployment of as many as 7,000 additional soldiers to patrol the country.