Louvre Museum

The Louvre occupies a former royal palace on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris's 1st arrondissement, and holds roughly 35,000 works on display, ranging from ancient Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia to European painting up to the mid-19th century. The collection is split across three wings, Denon, Sully and Richelieu, each over several floors. The Denon wing draws the largest crowds, with the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo among its best-known works, while the Sully wing houses the medieval moat of the original fortress and the Egyptian antiquities, and the Richelieu wing covers French sculpture, Mesopotamian art and the Napoleon III apartments. I.M. Pei's glass pyramid in the Cour Napoléon marks the main entrance, though the building itself, with its gilded salons and painted ceilings, is a draw in its own right. A focused visit lasts three to five hours; seeing the whole museum would take days. Crowds are heaviest from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, on weekends and in summer, with the Mona Lisa room usually the most congested. The late openings on Wednesday and Friday evenings, and the first hour after opening on weekdays, are noticeably quieter. The Seine-side Tuileries garden and the Cour Carrée courtyard provide good photographic vantage points outside, and the pyramid is most photogenic in late afternoon light. Visitors typically pick two or three themes and a floor plan in advance rather than trying to cover every wing, using the free museum map or the official app. The museum also contains the Apollo Gallery with the French crown jewels, the Code of Hammurabi in the Richelieu wing, and Michelangelo's Slaves, which are among the most visited rooms after the Mona Lisa. Seating is scattered through the galleries, and cafés and restaurants in the Carrousel du Louvre and under the pyramid allow breaks during a long visit. A reserved timed ticket also covers the permanent collection for the whole day.