Louvre Museum Paris: The Complete First-Time Visitor Guide

The Louvre is the world's most visited museum and one of the most overwhelming — 380,000 works across 72,735 square metres of galleries that could absorb weeks of sustained attention, housed in a former royal palace whose architecture is itself a work of art. A first visit requires radical curation: the three absolute must-sees are the Mona Lisa (Room 711, Denon Wing, surrounded by crowds — visit at opening or during the 9pm Wednesday/Friday late openings), the Venus de Milo (Room 16, Sully Wing, far less crowded), and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (top of the Denon Wing staircase — the greatest display of a sculpture anywhere in the world). The Dutch and Flemish galleries (Vermeer's The Lacemaker, Rembrandt's Bathsheba) and the ancient Egyptian antiquities (second largest collection in the world after Cairo) are often overlooked. Buy timed-entry tickets online — the Louvre does not issue same-day tickets at the door, and the I.M. Pei glass pyramid entrance queues without pre-booking can exceed 2 hours. The Richelieu Wing is consistently less crowded than Denon. The last 90 minutes before closing are the least crowded in the entire day.