The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is putting a 5,000-a-day limit on the number of visitors to prevent overcrowding and wear and tear to the building.

The museum can no longer sustainably accommodate pre-pandemic visitor numbers, which reached a peak of 2.1 million in 2019, director Emilie Gordenker told the Telegraaf. She said the pandemic, when the lack of foreign tourists cost the museum €4 million a month in revenue, provided a turning point.

“When I became director I already thought the museum’s dependence on foreign tourism presented be a risk. I said, ‘Suppose something bad happens’ and a couple of months later the pandemic came along. In a situation like that you need to change focus. I started calculating how many visitors it would take to maintain our programming for young and old and stay financially healthy,” she said.

As cities across the globe are struggling with sustainable tourist numbers, Gordenker came up with a number of 5,000 visititor a day which will stay in place for the foreseeable future.

“It’s impact above growth,” Gordenker said. “Our message continues to be that we are happy to see you and everyone is more than welcome but we also want you to enjoy your visit so please book ahead, as you would for a concert or the dentist.”

Market research also showed that many Dutch people had started to regard the museum as a tourist attraction and complained it was far too busy, with people crowding around well-known paintings, such as the Sunflowers.

The policy, which has been experimented with for some time, is beginning to bear fruit, Grodenker said. The number of national visitors has increased by 20%.

Some 1.7 visitors visited the museum last year; this year’s expected number is 1.8 million. “And that is it,” Gordenker said, “even if we earn less because national visitors spend less in the museum shop than tourists from America, Japan or China. We just can’t accommodate more,” she said.

Originally designed to cope with just 60,000 visitors a year, intensive use of the  Rietveld-designed building is also taking its toll. From 2028 the museum will be partly closed for a large-scale renovation, including the sewage system, the escalators and the lifts. It is not yet clear how long the renovation work will take.