How to Navigate Paris’s Louvre Museum Like a Pro

How do you fall in love with the Louvre? The biggest, grandest, most visited public repository of art in the world, it demands our attention. But love? Like an evasive paramour, the Louvre may not always seem to be interested in a relationship.

The building has sat, stonily, on the Right Bank of the Seine for centuries, starting as a medieval military fortress at the end of the 12th century, then becoming a palace and finally a museum. Royals and rulers renovated it more than 20 times, satisfying their vanity but leaving behind a sprawling structure that lacks logic. Its galleries, facades, staircases, and ceilings are individual jewels, but together they do not form a coherent whole. 

I remember nothing about the first time I visited the Louvre, the summer after my junior year in college. I wish I could say I was moved by its majesty, or felt the ghostly presence of kings and queens. Perhaps I was frustrated by the scale of the place: the long, dark corridors; wings closed because of a shortage of security guards; room after room of paintings of Jesus, Mary, and their relatives, followers, enemies, and attendant angels. I must have seen the Mona Lisa, but all I wrote in my journal was: “I went to the Louvre and walked outside of the Tuileries Garden along the shops.”

Like me, it took time for Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre, to yield to the museum’s seductive power. Des Cars came to the Louvre’s top job in 2021 after four years as head of the Musée d’Orsay, and some years before that as scientific director of the museum in Abu Dhabi that bears the Louvre’s name. But even she remembers nothing about the very first time she visited the Louvre. “I cannot really pin the moment,” she says. “I was not a great museum-goer when I was a kid.”

While there have been umpteen efforts to improve the visitor experience, directors of the Louvre have long acknowledged the challenges it presents—and its absence of cohesion and order. “Ours is a very difficult collection to comprehend—unless you know history, mythology, and the Bible,” Henri Loyrette, who served as director of the museum for 12 years, told me. “No one can possibly claim to be a ‘specialist of the Louvre.’ ” Jean-Luc Martinez, his successor, said “the Louvre is a palace and doesn’t have the logic of a museum.” Des Cars calls it “a large, jumbled encyclopedia.”

To free myself from feeling overcome by its forbidding magnitude, I had to learn how to visit the Louvre. I had to don the mantle of Loyrette’s humility. I had to wander and get lost and forget about time. I had to come to know the works of art by making connections and starting conversations as I roamed the galleries—with experts, guards, friends, even perfect strangers.

And so, over time and long acquaintance, the Louvre has pulled me into its grasp. I no longer see it as a fortress, palace, or museum, but as a living, breathing character with multiple personalities.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love. 

Over years of trial and error, I have developed personal strategies to make a Louvre visit more enjoyable, for both first-timers and old hands.

It can take forever to get in. In the summer of 2013, shortly after he was named director, Martinez posed as an ordinary tourist and stood in line at the main entrance. It took him more than three hours to enter. It’s not nearly that bad today, but still not good enough.

It is crucial to book timed tickets in advance, as only a small number of walk-ins are allowed per day. You can avoid the main entrance at the pyramid by trying the underground Carrousel entrance, but it can also get clogged. You can line up before the museum opens, but that tactic can backfire if too many guides and their clients do the same thing. Sometimes going at lunchtime or at the end of the day works better. Joining an organized group visit or hiring a private guide can help avoid the lines. Even with the Louvre’s decision in 2023 to slash the number of entry tickets by 30 percent, there may be a wait, and it could be a long one, whatever your strategy.

Come relaxed, not stressed from a ride in an overcrowded Métro or a taxi that has been trapped in central Paris’s gridlock. And don’t count on eating when you get inside. The food stations are crowded, and the fare is mediocre. It’s best to arrive at the Louvre straight from a café. (One of my mantras is: “Never come to the Louvre on an empty stomach or with a full bladder.”) My favorite spot is Le Nemours, a three-minute walk from the museum on the Place Colette. No one at Le Nemours would mind if you ordered just one chocolat chaud and sat there for five hours. But hot chocolate is not your goal. So fortify yourself with a traditional, correctly toasted croque monsieur and head toward the museum.

Once inside, you ride down escalators into an open circular space with the feel of an airport terminal. You hear the noise of the crowd before you see it. The signs warning visitors to look out for pickpockets are unnerving but necessary. If it’s a sunny day, it gets hot; sunlight bounces off the pale stone floors and blinds you. Your visit hasn’t even started, but you already feel disoriented.

Most of the explanatory labels near each work of art are brief and written only in French. The official foldout map, showing locations of the exhibits, seems designed to confuse.

But don’t let the Louvre’s imperfect welcome discourage you. You’re here to see great art. You’ve paid admission to get in, and the temptation is to get your money’s worth. Ninety minutes to two hours is what most people can manage in one go. If you try to stay longer without a break, your feet will hurt, and you will forget much of what you saw. Travel light, with a small backpack or the smallest handbag possible; leave the guidebook, the sketchbook, and the water bottle home. Wear sturdy footwear. For the slippery stone, especially the marble stairs, I would stick with your most structured running shoes. To minimize distractions, avoid Mondays. It’s the worst day to go, because the Musée d’Orsay is closed, increasing demand at the Louvre (which is itself closed on Tuesdays). Avoid Wednesday afternoon, because French children have no school, freeing throngs of families for museum-going.

The Louvre also closes certain rooms (cleaning, renovations, lack of security staff) and announces the closures on its website. If you are determined to see certain artworks, reading up in advance offers some help. There are thousands of guidebooks. My favorite is an oversize, 107-page official guide with excellent color images, Masterpieces of the Louvre. It comes in several languages and can be purchased for just eight euros at the museum or through its online store.

As much as I prefer wandering, I can give a basic Louvre pilgrims’ tour—the biggies and more—in two hours. I take guests up the escalator to the Sully wing, through a vestibule where the walls are decorated with four friezes, and then into a long tunnel to see the vestiges of a centuries-old fortress wall.

Then we mount a staircase on the right, and then another, also to our right, and enter the vaulted Renaissance music gallery known as Le Salle des Caryatides, with its ancient Roman statues. Through the windows, we view the pyramid on the right and the Cour Carrée on the left and continue straight to the Venus de Milo, in the room next door.

We take a breath here. Then comes a right turn through the juncture of the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan collections. We take a quick look at the Baroque ceiling, then head up the stairs to the Winged Victory of Samothrace. We have now reached the Denon wing and find ourselves at the museum’s busiest crossroads. First, we revel in the beauty of the goddess of victory. Then we proceed to the left into the razzle-dazzle Apollo Gallery, where the crown jewels are displayed. After we’ve been blinded by France’s royal heritage—or what’s left of it—we U-turn and return to the Winged Victory.

This time we take a right, pausing as we encounter Botticelli’s Venus. (There are quiet places to sit near the windows that look out to the floor below.) Then through the Salon Carré, with its 13th- to 15th-century Italian paintings, and more famous and later Italian paintings in the Grande Galerie, which is not a gallery but a long corridor. We don’t miss the four Leonardos! Walking the length of the Grande Galerie, we then follow the crowd to a room that leads to the Salle des États to see the Mona Lisa. I tell my guests not to waste 20 minutes waiting in line unless they are determined to take a selfie with her, but to look at her from the side. Then I insist we take in the other great paintings in the room, starting with Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana, 150 times bigger than the Mona Lisa. And we don’t leave without spending time with Titian’s Man with a Glove. On the other side of the partition where the Mona Lisa hangs are three other Titians. Hardly anyone looks at them, but we do! 

When we leave the Salle des États through the Mona Lisa gift shop, we turn to the Red Room, which is filled with the best of Neoclassical art, from David’s Coronation of Napoleon to Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, one of the most beautiful women in the Louvre. Then we go back to the other gallery next to the Salon Denon to see what Romanticism did best in Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. After this we’ll find ourselves at the Escalier Mollien, which we descend to witness how Michelangelo captured in marble the beauty of two slaves. Et voilà, we’ve seen some of the best the Louvre has to offer.

Now for my dirty little secret about how to conquer the Louvre stress-free. While entry is free for many, the price of a standard ticket is 22 euros (about $23) and expected to cost 30 euros (about $31) in 2026. If you plan to visit multiple times over the course of a trip, splurge and become a Friend of the Louvre. For 80 euros—the price of dinner with wine at a reputable bistro—you can buy an annual membership (120 euros for two people). You can apply in advance online, with a photo; the card will be mailed to you. Or apply in person at the Amis du Louvre office inside the Louvre. You just wave the card at the Richelieu entrance, enjoy unlimited entry, cut the line like a celebrity, and stay for as long as you want. It is the best cultural deal in Paris.

Launch an opération séduction on the staff. “If you’re a normal person, you might feel aggressive and frustrated,” Guillaume Kientz, director of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York and a former Louvre curator, told me. “Instead, be extremely nice to all the employees—say ‘Bonjour’ to all the security guards. They could use appreciation from the visitors, because they are the ones no one looks at except to complain. If you treat a French person with kindness, all the doors will open for you.” 

When it all feels overwhelming, head to a quiet place: the lower floor of Islamic Arts, perhaps, or the rooms with the Poussin paintings, or a marble bench in the Marly sculpture courtyard. Just say to yourself over and over, “I am in Paris. I am in the Louvre.” 

Excerpted from Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love With the World’s Greatest Museum, published this month by W. W. Norton & Company.

A version of this story first appeared in the March 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Learning to Love the Louvre.”