SEOUL — Kwon Young-doo, owner of a private art gallery in Seoul’s historic Bukchon Hanok Village, is concerned about an impending curfew policy aimed at mitigating overtourism in the area.

The curfew, set for a trial in November and to be officially launched in March next year, will limit tourist access to specific areas of Bukchon from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. Fines of up to 100,000 won ($72) will be imposed on violators.

“Who would want to visit?” said Kwon, the owner of the Asian Cultural Art Museum, who moved to the historic area 18 years ago. “They’ll leave with a bad impression of South Korea.”

Bukchon Hanok Village, with its narrow winding alleyways in hilly northern Seoul, dates back to the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897). The area has become a popular tourist destination, especially after being featured on a TV show a decade ago.

Tourists and Koreans alike are drawn to the neighborhood for its quaint houses with signature wood columns and doors, a courtyard, and tiled roof.

However, increased tourism has become more than an inconvenience for the residents, who complain about noise, littering, public urination, and invasion of privacy.

Some tourists have been caught on surveillance cameras trying to enter private homes or peeking inside without permission, generating friction with locals.

Many residents have chosen to leave, leading to a 27.6% drop in the village’s population over the past 10 years, according to the Jongno district office.

The area attracted approximately 6 million visitors last year, compared with its resident population of around 6,100.

Chung Moon-hun, the Jongno district head, says the goal is to protect the rights of residents and the restrictions will be adjusted if necessary to make it effective. The area where curfew hours and fines will be imposed is approximately 34,000 square meters, about the size of five soccer fields.

But residents are skeptical about the policy’s effectiveness citing loopholes such as exemptions for tourists staying overnight in hanok accommodations. They also blame the proliferation of corporate-run hanok stays for disrupting their lives.

Since 2020, authorities have loosened restrictions on traditional Korean houses offering accommodation, resulting in a surge in corporate-run hanok stays in the residential areas, residents say.

In 2010, 10 traditional houses were registered in Bukchon under the name Traditional Korean Housing Experience Businesses; by October 2024, that number had ballooned to 116, according to the district office.

“People come for just a day to enjoy themselves, and the noise from parties is extremely loud,” said Kim Eun-mee, who lives next to a hanok stay. Clearing trash in front of her home has become a chore she has to tend to several times a day.

“It’s often difficult to maintain a normal daily routine due to disturbances like people dragging suitcases around even during the early hours, which frequently wakes me up.”

Lee Dong-woo, CEO of hanok stay booking platform BUTLER.LEE, said the business took off when owners who found it difficult to renovate or maintain old houses entrusted the property to hospitality businesses.

“These requests are driving the expansion, not because we are actively evicting current residents to operate hanok stays, which is completely untrue,” Lee who manages 17 hanok stays in Bukchon said.

Tourists, meanwhile, are divided over the curfew. Some agree the residents’ quality of life is important. Others chafe at the idea of getting fined for simply walking down a public street.

There are also questions about enforcement; how to tell tourists from residents, how to make foreigners pay the fine, and the language barrier. — Reuters

NEW YORK — Global art sales fell 4% last year to around $65 billion, as the wealthiest buyers reduced purchases, according to the Art Market Report, published by Swiss bank UBS on Thursday.

The bank’s wealth management division advises clients interested in buying art, although it does not consider the purchases as investments.

Inflation, high interest rates, and political instability made the wealthiest clients become more cautious with art purchases and take more time deciding on potential acquisitions, according to the UBS Global Wealth Management chief economist Paul Donovan.

Sales volume at art auctions dropped 7% and at dealers, by 3%, mainly by slowing demand for more expensive art and purchases of average lower value.

The only country where art sales grew was China, which became the world’s second-largest art market after the US with a 9% rise in transactions to $12.2 billion. Mr. Donovan credits the higher activity by Chinese buyers to delayed post-COVID lockdown behavior, since China kept isolation measures longer than Western countries.

High interest rates and inflation contributed to the collapse of the most speculative art transactions, such as sales of digital art known as NFT, the UBS economist added.

NFT sales peaked at $2.9 billion in 2021 and were 51% lower than the peak last year. They do not seem to have recovered even later this year, Mr. Donovan said, after interest rates began dropping and other assets such as crypto currencies rose. — Reuters

ROME — Archaeologists in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii have uncovered a richly decorated but uncommonly small house with finely preserved frescoes of mythological scenes, the site said on Thursday.

The dwelling, called the House of Phaedra after the mythological queen of Athens who features in one of its wall paintings, sheds light on changing architectural styles in the first century AD, the Pompeii archaeological park said in a statement.

Unlike many of the houses excavated at the site, it was not built around the traditional Roman atrium, an open space with a pool for collecting rainwater.

Despite its small size, the house “strikes us for the high level of its wall decorations,” the statement said, noting they were of similar quality to much larger and more opulent homes near the new discovery, which lies in the center of the site.

The once-thriving city of Pompeii and the surrounding countryside in southern Italy was submerged by volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius exploded in A.D. 79.

The eruption killed thousands of Romans who had no idea they were living in the shadow of one of Europe’s biggest volcanoes. It buried the city in a thick layer of ash, preserving many of its residents and buildings.

Besides the fresco of Phaedra and Hippolytus, who spurned her love, other mythological scenes adorning the vividly colored walls of the house include a sexual encounter between a satyr and a nymph, and gods who the site said may have been Venus and Adonis.

The building also boasts numerous smaller, but detailed and beautifully preserved patterns and scenes from nature. — Reuters

BERLIN — It shaped modern industrial design and continues to inspire architects and product designers the world over, but to some on Germany’s far right, Bauhaus is nothing to celebrate.

As the East German city of Dessau prepares to celebrate next year’s centenary of the famed design school’s move there, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has urged local legislators not to glorify Bauhaus’ cosmopolitan style ethos, saying it negated regional traditions.

The AfD’s proposal, debated and roundly rejected by the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this week, sparked a predictable outcry: Bauhaus was part of the interwar flourishing of German avant-garde culture that was stamped out by the Nazis when they came to power in 1933.

But for some, the content of the proposal was less significant than what it said about the party’s broader political strategy.

This year the AfD became the first far-right party to win a German regional election since World War Two, benefitting from a flagging economy but also by tapping into culturally divisive issues that crystallize splits over national identity.

“Culture war is their business model and provocation is their business model,” said Jan-Werner Mueller, a politics professor at Princeton University who studies populist far-right movements.

Elsewhere, the party has targeted authorities that use gender-neutral language and fly rainbow LGBTQ+ flags from municipal buildings, casting itself as a champion of traditional German grammar and family values.

Founded in 1919, the Bauhaus school set out to marry traditional craftsmanship with industrial production.

It became a magnet for designers from across Europe, many of them Jewish, and its very cosmopolitanism made it a cultural touchstone for post-war Germany as it looked for chinks of light in a history scarred by the genocidal crimes of the Nazis.

But that cosmopolitan spirit has been seized upon by some on the far right to portray the movement as un-German.

“The international spread of the Bauhaus style created a porridge-like homogeneity that displaced local architectural traditions,” the AfD’s legislative motion read, rejecting the “uncritical glorification” of the movement.

‘CREATING NOISE’
Around the world, the AfD is not alone among right-wing groups in rejecting modern architecture and design.

Donald Trump’s US administration sought to prescribe neoclassical architecture for all new federal buildings, while Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has rebuilt much of the center of Budapest in a supposed restoration of its pre-war facade.

“The AfD has recognized the importance of the cultural sphere,” said Barbara Steiner, head of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. “Because you can use it to touch people’s hearts and emotions.”

The Bauhaus building in Dessau, with its distinctive steel window frames, unadorned facade and curved lettering is an international icon that inspired much post-war social housing, not all of which was successful or popular.

That has given the AfD space to argue that it is defending German culture by attacking the school and its legacy — including the clean, airy lines of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s architecture or Marcel Breuer’s iconic cantilever chair.

“They’re creating noise, showing that they are protecting their voters, defending high art and traditional values,” said Stephan Ehrig, a lecturer at Glasgow University.

The fact that the attack dismayed admirers of the Bauhaus style made it all the more effective as a tactic: polarization is good politics, he added.

During this week’s debate in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD legislator behind the proposal, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, told the legislature “your worship of Bauhaus seems very fragile … if our subjecting it to a little criticism might take your precious Bauhaus away from you.” — Reuters

PARIS — France should charge visitors a small fee to see the Notre-Dame cathedral to help the country keep its world-famous churches and cathedrals in shape, the culture minister said.

Rachida Dati told newspaper Le Figaro in an interview published last week that by charging only €5 per visitor Notre-Dame could raise €75 million ($81 million) a year.

In France, where secularism is part of the national identity, the state is in charge of maintaining the country’s religious sites, including 15,000 classified as historic monuments, which are usually free of charge.

Notre-Dame has been undergoing reconstruction after a fire severely damaged its roof and spire. President Emmanuel Macron had pledged to rebuild Notre-Dame within five years, drawing massive private-sector financial support.

“As a good Christian, you are supposed to contribute and give some money to the church. But that’s supposed to be from your heart, not from charging the money,” said Soraya Arango, a tourist from Mexico who visited the cathedral.

French tourist Jean-Marie Delprat said he welcomed Ms. Dati’s initiative.

“One has to understand that it is necessary to do maintenance work, and not only here. There are other churches,” Mr. Delprat said.

Ms. Dati, a former Paris district mayor, also said tourists from outside the European Union should pay more to visit non-religious landmarks.

“Is it normal that a French visitor pays the same entrance fee to the Louvre as a Brazilian or Chinese visitor?” Ms. Dati said, adding: “I want visitors from outside the EU to pay more for their entrance ticket and for this supplement to go toward financing the renovation of our national heritage.”

The minister said many of the country’s famous buildings attracting millions of tourists per year were in a degraded state and that new funding sources were needed to address mounting preservation challenges, especially in the capital.

She said the ministry was working on implementing a new pricing policy, which is likely to require coordination with various public and private entities, from January 2026.

“A country that gives up on carrying out major cultural projects gives up on being a great nation,” Ms. Dati said. — Reuters