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As France prepares for another weekend of protests, some of its most famous streets and landmarks are bracing and boarding up.
French authorities expect hundreds of thousands of protesters to take to the streets on Saturday.
Last weekend, student-led cost-of-living protests devolved in some places into violent riots and looting.
This weekend, the interior ministry has said it will increase police presence, deploying some 70,000 officers across the country on Saturday. The protests are expected to draw support from various groups and organizations, including the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests.
On Saturday morning, military officers and a multipurpose intervention vehicle could be seen positioned outside of Paris' National Assembly building.
Shops on Paris' iconic Champs-Élysées were boarded up on Friday in anticipation of another weekend of protest.
Luxury stores including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Moncler all have stores on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
Some 1,500 businesses were targeted in last weekend's vandalism, said Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of Carrefour, one of France's largest supermarket chains.
French business leaders widely condemned the looting that happened on October 17.
Business leaders including Thierry Guibert, CEO of Lacoste, and Nicolas Houzé, executive chairman of Galeries Lafayette, all spoke out in the aftermath of last weekend's damage.
"We cannot allow violence to destroy what generations have put so much energy into building," Guibert wrote on X.
In central Paris, some shop owners boarded up their businesses on Friday as a precautionary measure.
Among the areas targeted in last weekend's violence in Paris were the Marais shopping district and the Place de la République.
Speaking to Business Insider's correspondent Nathan Rennolds last weekend, one shopkeeper in Paris said looters had "taken everything."
Major Paris tourist attractions, including the Louvre, have closed for the day.
In a notice on its website, the Louvre says the museum will be closed on Saturday and all reservations will be reimbursed. The Louvre closed its doors earlier this week after student protests blocked the entrances.
The Grand Palais and Musée d'Orsay are also closed for the day.
In an update issued on Thursday, the US Embassy in France warned Americans to avoid demonstrations and said curfews across the country, including in some Paris neighborhoods, might continue. It also advised Americans in Paris for the NFL game on Sunday, October 25, to exercise caution.
Protests are expected more broadly across Europe on Saturday, too.
Protests are also expected in countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Albania.
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Lina is Business Insider's international executive editor.She leads BI's editorial and audience teams in Singapore and London. Her teams cover the gamut of BI beats, ranging from business, tech, and economy to lifestyle, health, and culture. She is based in London.Before this, she spent 5 years working in Singapore, where she launched and led Business Insider's first Asia bureau. As the bureau's first managing editor, she defined the vision for regional coverage, recruited and trained all talent, and set up the processes that made BI a global, 24-hour newsroom. She took over as bureau chief in 2022, overseeing all editorial coverage out of the time zone and leading the company's editorial and hiring strategy for the region. Her first role at BI was in NYC, as a business-lifestyle editor.She is the first BI employee to have worked full-time for the company in the US, Asia, and Europe. Prior to joining BI, she helped scale a media startup, worked in freelance news, and started out in medical publishing.
