The Louvre: Tips for Planning Your Visit

Perhaps the best way to showcase the Louvre is with a bit of artistic licence.

UPDATED: 2/4/2023

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The Louvre is usually one of the main Parisian landmarks people plan on visiting while in the city. The building has a fascinating place in French history well beyond its current life as an art museum. In this blog, we’ll share with you all things Louvre - from fun facts to our personal experience to tips for your own visit. Have you been? For a museum as large as this one, I expect no two visits are alike. We would love to hear your own tips and experiences in our comments section!

who knew?! Louvre’s Surprises

The main Louvre glass pyramid (which is flanked by 4 smaller ones) marks the museum’s subterranean entrance.
The Louvre started out life as a fortress in the late 1100s to protect the city from river access and became the royal palace in the 1500s. Its life as an art museum is but a minor period of time in its long life.
A large portion of the museum is underground! If you think it looks large, you have no idea! The floors in the building (there are 5) reflect the above- and below-ground nature with floors labelled -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2.
The Louvre is the largest art museum in the world and the world’s most visited. There are over 7 million visitors a year, and over 400,000 pieces of artwork.

In some locations of the Louvre (especially near the Mona Lisa) the crowds can be a little overwhelming!

The layout of the louvre

The Nymph with a Scorpion. I can’t get over how soft a master can make marble appear!

I would recommend you familiarize yourself with the Louvre’s general layout before visiting. The museum is split into three wings: Richelieu, Sully, and Denon. The museum is 5-stories tall, with each wing having (to varying degrees) exhibits on each floor within it. The 5 floors are not 1-5 as you might expect but are labelled as -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2. As much as we love art, the most we can handle is usually a few hours in a museum at a time between the crowds and before we feel like we have gotten so inundated at looking at art that we stop getting as much out of it. If you have specific pieces you must see, make sure to plan a route to get to those. For us, we were more about the experience of it all and did not have any must-see pieces.

tips for getting into the louvre and out of it

As mentioned above, the main entrance is actually a tad hidden in the expansive building and is immediately under the large, glass pyramid. If you can find that, you’ll have no trouble getting in from there.

Finding the exit to the Louvre was almost as challenging (for us at least!) as figuring out its entrance. On the bottom floor (-2), the exit is situated just past the gift shop (of course) through a bit of an underground walkway that will spit you out in the Tuileries garden.

crowds

We arrived at the Louvre mid-afternoon (2:30pm local) and found no line to enter, though the museum itself had a lot of visitors. Our visit was in early April, which is not peak tourist season in the city.

For our visit, we selected the Denon wing where we saw the collection of Roman and Greek statues and French and Italian paintings, including the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is situated in a room entirely by itself, and while I have heard others have visited and struggled to even get into the room due to the crowds, we found ourselves there when the crowd took up only a small amount of the room. Even so, there were some very aggressive people! I literally got shoved by several people who wanted a front row view. I can’t think of any other art museum where I have been physically pushed like that! I’m not sure whether I’m proud of myself or embarrassed to admit that I shoved back (but only at the aggressors!). This, people, is how fights probably start. I’m surprised that we don’t see more (any) Mona Lisa brawls in the news.

are there restaurants at the louvre?

My friends, there is in fact a Starbucks in the Louvre. There is some cold, hard irony in that if you ask me. Beyond that, there are a number of casual grab-and-go sandwich spots in the main atrium/center of the museum, some embedded within the wings, and a bit more of a sit-down spot in the atrium. We found large crowds at lunchtime and opted to wait and then found most things closing down or out of food around 4pm when we finally ate a really late lunch.

our favorite exhibit

We are well aware that there is a lot of the Louvre we did not see, but the hidden gem that we happened upon and loved was the Denon wing’s Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Not only were the statues and artifacts fascinating, but the exhibit was much less crowded so that we could actually breathe and enjoy ourselves.

The Louvre | Paris France | To Make Much of Time

Maori head | The Louvre | Paris France | To Make Much of Time

Kūkaʻilimoku head | The Louvre | Paris France | To Make Much of Time

preparing for your visit to the louvre

Familiarize yourself with the lay-out using this map. And consider downloading the Louvre’s own app. While we did download it ourselves, we found the more standard map easier for us to use. If you’re interested in the app and finding the right version, you can read more about it and see its icon here. Since leaving Paris, I have not yet deleted the app and periodically get special notes about Louvre closures, etc. so you may find it helpful regardless of your map preference.