FRA9 · GREAT MUSEUMS

The Louvre Museum

Ten thousand years of human creativity inside a royal palace: a complete, readable guide from the Mona Lisa and Egyptian sculpture to Mesopotamian law and French Romanticism.Explore the masterpieces ↓

35,000+works displayed in the galleries

500,000+records in the online collection

400+rooms

3main wings: Denon, Sully, Richelieu

01 · THE PALACE

Read the palace first

The Louvre is not simply a container for art; the building itself preserves successive layers of French history.

01Philip Augustus built a fortress beside the Seine at the end of the 12th century. Its medieval foundations remain visible beneath the Sully wing.

02Francis I transformed the fortress into a Renaissance palace. Later rulers expanded its courts, galleries and ceremonial rooms; after Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles, the Louvre increasingly housed academies, artists and the royal collection.

03The museum opened to the public in 1793. Royal collections, archaeology, purchases and gifts expanded its reach. I. M. Pei’s glass Pyramid opened in 1989, creating a modern entrance at the heart of the historic palace.

02 · COLLECTIONS

What is displayed at the Louvre?

The collection is not one straight line of art history. Nine curatorial departments create distinct worlds stretching from the ancient Mediterranean and Iran to the French court.

Egyptian Antiquities

Mummies, sarcophagi, papyri, divine and royal sculpture, jewellery and daily objects across some three millennia.

Near Eastern Antiquities

The first cities, palaces and writing traditions of Mesopotamia, Iran and the Levant, including Hammurabi’s law stele and Assyrian reliefs.

Greek, Etruscan and Roman

Marble sculpture, vases, bronzes and mosaics from the ancient Mediterranean; home to the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory.

Islamic Art

Ceramics, metalwork, glass, carpets, manuscripts and calligraphy from Spain to India, spanning the 7th to 19th centuries.

Paintings

European painting from the 13th to 19th centuries: Leonardo, Veronese, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, David, Ingres and Delacroix.

Sculptures

French and European sculpture from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, including Michelangelo’s Slaves, Canova’s Psyche and the Marly court.

Decorative Arts

Crown jewels, royal furniture, tapestries, ivories, enamels and porcelain, with the Galerie d’Apollon and Napoleon III apartments.

Prints and Drawings

Drawings, pastels, prints and manuscripts reveal artists thinking on paper; light-sensitive works rotate.

Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art

A new department spanning the 3rd to 20th centuries from the Levant to the Caucasus and Slavic world; dedicated galleries are planned for 2028.

LEONARDO DA VINCI · 1503–1519

How to look at the Mona Lisa

The sitter is generally identified as Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Leonardo kept the painting with him and refined it over many years.

Its fame is not just the smile. Leonardo’s sfumato dissolves hard contours; the eyes and mouth never settle into one expression. The imagined landscape connects an intimate face to deep geological time.

Painted in oil on a poplar panel, it is smaller than many expect. It hangs in the Salle des États inside a climate-controlled protective case. Look at the triangular structure of face and hands, the translucent veil and the uneven horizons behind her.

03 · MASTERPIECES

Masterpieces of the Louvre

This is not the whole museum; it is a strong opening route through different civilisations and ways of making art.

Leonardo da Vinci · 1503–1519

Mona Lisa

A Renaissance icon in which portrait and landscape merge, while gaze and smile never quite become fixed.

2nd century BCE

Winged Victory of Samothrace

Nike lands on the prow of a ship as wind presses drapery against her body; the Daru staircase completes the drama.

c. 130–100 BCE

Venus de Milo

A marble Aphrodite found on Melos, compelling for the calm turn of the torso and the movement of drapery as much as for her missing arms.

c. 1750 BCE

Code of Hammurabi

The king faces the sun and justice god Shamash above hundreds of cuneiform provisions on society, trade, family and punishment.

c. 2600 BCE

Great Sphinx of Tanis

A monumental granite guardian combining lion and king; names of later pharaohs show how the object was repeatedly claimed across centuries.

Théodore Géricault · 1818–1819

The Raft of the Medusa

A real maritime disaster becomes a vast political painting, its bodies rising from despair towards a distant hope.

Eugène Delacroix · 1830

Liberty Leading the People

The July Revolution between allegory and street reality: Liberty is both classical goddess and woman of Paris.

Jacques-Louis David · 1805–1807

The Coronation of Napoleon

A monumental image of power that shows less what happened than how the Empire wanted history to remember it.

Antonio Canova · 1787–1793

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss

A circular marble composition that seems to defeat weight; walk around it to see the embrace unfold.

Paolo Veronese · 1563

The Wedding Feast at Cana

More than a hundred figures turn a biblical miracle into a Venetian feast on a canvas nearly ten metres wide.

04 · QUIET ROUTE

The Louvre beyond the crowds

Cour Marly and Cour Puget

Monumental French garden sculpture under glass roofs.

Napoleon III Apartments

Velvet, gilding and chandeliers reveal the splendour of the Second Empire.

Galerie d’Apollon

Crown jewels, hardstone vessels and a ceiling that foreshadowed Versailles.

Northern paintings

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens and Van Dyck in calmer rooms.

Medieval Louvre

The fortress moat and foundations beneath the Sully wing.

05 · VISIT PLAN

Choose a Louvre route

90 minutes · First encounter

Winged Victory → Mona Lisa and Wedding at Cana → Galerie d’Apollon → Venus de Milo.

3 hours · Balanced

Great Sphinx → medieval foundations → Venus → Victory → Italian painting → French large-format painting → Cour Marly.

1 day · Two-part visit

Ancient worlds and Islamic Art in the morning; painting, sculpture and decorative arts after a proper break.

Know before you go

Tickets, opening times and reservation rules change; check the official Louvre website for your date.
Denon is the busiest wing. Sully and Richelieu are generally calmer early in the day.
Rooms may close on rotation; check the official open-galleries list and map on the day.
Wear comfortable shoes, choose a small route and take breaks. Seeing everything in one day is not realistic.

Official map and entrances ↗Check open galleries ↗

References: Musée du Louvre · Louvre Collections · Wikimedia Commons

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