Paris Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

The Louvre was a fortress before it was a palace, and a palace before it was a museum. Philip II dug the first keep in the 1190s. Kings spent four centuries turning it into a residence.

Fortress, palace, museum

It opened to the public in 1793, mid-Revolution, with 537 paintings. Today it shows some 35,000 objects across eight departments. No art museum has more gallery space.

The glass pyramid went up at the end of the 1980s and was widely loathed. It is simply the way in.

Which wing, and what stands in it

Nobody sees the whole museum in one visit, so the useful question is which wing.

• Denon. The Mona Lisa in the Salle des Etats, the Winged Victory of Samothrace above the Daru staircase, and the vast French history canvases.
• Sully. The oldest part. The Venus de Milo stands here, and the moat and keep of the medieval castle are exposed in the basement.
• Richelieu. French sculpture in two glass-roofed courtyards, the Near Eastern rooms, the apartments of Napoleon III.
• Galerie d'Apollon. Eight crown jewels were taken from it in October 2025 and have not come back. It is open again and shown empty, so the ceiling is the exhibit.

Two hours with a guide covers one honest route. Anything beyond that is a second visit.

Practical

• Closed Tuesdays. Late opening Wednesday and Friday, until nine.
• Timed entry. The slot matters more than the queue, and it applies on guided tickets too. Book days ahead in summer.
• Two-tier price. Twenty-two euros for EEA residents, thirty-two for everyone else. Under-eighteens and EEA residents under twenty-six go free.
• Free evenings. First Friday of the month after six, except July and August, plus the fourteenth of July.
• Doors. The underground Carrousel entrance is usually quicker than the pyramid.
• Inside. The first hour of the day is a different museum from the middle of it. Photography without flash is fine.