Best of the Louvre Small-Group Guided Tour with Timed Ticket Paris

Place Colette and the approach to the Pyramid

The tour begins at Place Colette, the small square in front of the Comédie-Française theatre and the Palais-Royal, directly above the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station. Its landmark is the Kiosque des Noctambules, the metro entrance made of coloured glass balls on aluminium frames, created in 2000 for the centenary of the Paris metro; your guide waits beside it holding a sign. From here it is a five-minute walk past the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli into the Cour Napoléon, where the glass Pyramid of 1989 rises in the middle of the palace courtyard.

Starting outside the museum has a purpose: the guide explains the layout of the three wings, the Pyramid and the surrounding palace facades before you go in, so that the building makes sense once you are inside. Place Colette is also the best place to arrive early, with cafés around the square and the Palais-Royal gardens a minute away.

Eight hundred years of the Louvre

The thread of this Louvre guided tour is the building itself. It started around 1190 as a square fortress with a central keep guarding Paris from attacks along the Seine; in the 16th century the kings pulled the fortress down and built a Renaissance palace in its place, which every later monarch extended. The long Grande Galerie along the river, the great courtyard and the classical colonnade on the east side all date from this royal period. The museum opened in 1793 with the royal collection, and two emperors in the 19th century enlarged it into the vast complex you see, finishing the wings around the Cour Napoléon.

By the end of the 20th century the Louvre had become the most visited museum in the world, with the Pyramid as its entrance and some 35,000 works on display. Your guide points out the fortress foundations, the Renaissance facades of the Cour Carrée and the 19th-century wings as you pass, so the architecture becomes part of the visit.

The Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa

Guides call them the three ladies of the Louvre, and this tour is built around them. The Venus de Milo stands in the Greek galleries of the Sully wing: a marble of the 2nd century BC found on the island of Milos in 1820, famous for the twist of her body and the arms that were never recovered. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, carved around 190 BC to celebrate a naval victory, rises on the landing of the Daru staircase with her wings spread and her drapery pressed by the wind, one of the great sights of the museum.

The Mona Lisa hangs in the Salle des États on the first floor of the Denon wing, behind glass, with visitors filing past. Seeing the Mona Lisa with a guide matters: the group of six moves through the queue together, and the guide explains the technique, the sitter and the 1911 theft before you reach the painting, so the short moment in front of it means more.

The coronation painting and the Italian and French galleries

Opposite the Mona Lisa and in the red rooms beyond it hang the largest paintings in the museum. The coronation painting, completed in 1807, is almost ten metres wide and shows the imperial coronation ceremony of 1804 in Notre-Dame with more than a hundred portraits of the court; the guide reveals the details the artist changed to flatter his patrons. Around it hang French canvases of the same period, including the Raft of the Medusa and the Liberty painting of the 1830 revolution, which together explain how French painting moved from the heroic to the dramatic.

To get there you walk the Grande Galerie, the long hall of Italian painting from the early Renaissance to the Baroque, with Florentine, Venetian and Roman works on both sides. The guide picks out a handful of key paintings rather than trying to see everything, which is why two hours in this group of six feel unhurried.

Timed tickets, fast-track entry and the end of the visit

Since 2025 the Louvre requires a timed reservation for every visitor, and this tour includes it: your entry is booked for the start time of the tour, and after the security check the group goes in through fast-track access rather than queuing for tickets. Louvre tickets bought this way cannot be reused, and the museum no longer allows re-entry once you leave, so the tour is planned as a complete visit. Temporary exhibitions are not included. The museum is closed on Tuesdays and opens from 9:00 on other days, with late evenings on some days.

The visit ends inside the museum after two hours, near the Pyramid exit. From there the Tuileries Garden is directly to the west, with chairs by the ponds and views up to Place de la Concorde, and the Seine quays are two minutes to the south. Backpacks, large bags and strollers are not allowed in, so come light.