Louvre Museum Guided Tour with Reserved Access and Seine Cruise Paris

The Louvre Museum: from fortress to the world's most visited museum

The Louvre began around 1190 as a fortress guarding the western edge of Paris, grew into a royal palace over four centuries and opened as a public museum in 1793. Today it is the most visited museum in the world, with about 35,000 works on display across three wings, Denon, Sully and Richelieu, arranged around the glass pyramid that has been the main entrance since 1989. The collections run from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through Islamic art and the Italian Renaissance to French painting of the 19th century, and the building itself, with its gilded ceilings and royal apartments, is part of the visit.

A Louvre guided tour is the easiest way to make sense of this size. With reserved access you avoid the main ticket queue, and your guide follows a planned route that covers the essential works in two hours, which is why first-time visitors find it far more rewarding than wandering alone. The museum is closed on Tuesdays and opens late on Wednesday and Friday evenings.

The Mona Lisa and the Denon wing

The Denon wing holds the paintings most people come for. Your guide takes you up the Daru staircase, past the Winged Victory, and into the long Grande Galerie of Italian painting before reaching the Salle des États, the largest room of the museum, where the Mona Lisa hangs behind glass on its own wall. The portrait was painted in Florence in the early 1500s, came to France with the royal collection and became world famous after it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and recovered two years later. Opposite it hangs the vast Wedding Feast at Cana, the largest painting in the museum.

Because this is a group of up to twenty with headsets, you hear the guide clearly even in the crowd around the painting. The guided route then passes the large French canvases of the early 19th century, including Liberty Leading the People and the Coronation scene, before continuing to the sculpture galleries. Expect to spend about forty minutes in this wing.

The Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory and the ancient collections

Two sculptures define the Louvre as much as any painting. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, carved around 190 BC and discovered on the Greek island of Samothrace in 1863, stands at the top of the Daru staircase with her wings spread as if landing on the prow of a ship; it is the most dramatic sight in the museum and the first stop of the guided route. The Venus de Milo, found on the island of Milos in 1820, stands in the Sully wing among the Greek marbles, her missing arms still debated by scholars two centuries later.

Around these two works the guide shows you the Salle des Caryatides, the Renaissance hall supported by four sculpted women, and the Egyptian galleries with their sarcophagi and everyday objects. Children usually find this part the most memorable, and it is also where you see the vaulted medieval foundations of the original castle, preserved beneath the Sully wing.

The Seine River cruise from the Alma Bridge

Your cruise ticket is a separate experience that you can use on any day within six months of the tour, at any departure that suits you. Boats leave from the Alma Bridge, a few minutes on foot from the Eiffel Tower, roughly every thirty minutes, seven days a week, and the circuit lasts about an hour. The route runs east along the river past the Grand Palais, the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre, rounds the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis with Notre-Dame Cathedral at the centre, and returns under the Pont Neuf, the Pont Alexandre III and the other bridges of Paris before finishing opposite the Eiffel Tower.

The Seine River cruise is the best way to see how the monuments relate to each other, because almost every major building of central Paris faces the water. Many travellers save the ticket for the evening of their choice, when the bridges are lit and the tower sparkles on the hour.

The Carrousel arch and the Tuileries side of the palace

The tour begins at the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the smaller triumphal arch that stands between the Louvre pyramid and the Tuileries Garden. It was built between 1806 and 1808 to celebrate military victories and once served as the gateway to the Tuileries Palace, which burned down in 1871; its disappearance opened the long view that runs today from the Louvre through the garden and the Place de la Concorde to the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe.

Knowing how to get to the Louvre meeting point is simple: take metro line 1 or 7 to Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre and walk through the Cour Napoléon to the arch, or arrive by bus along the Rue de Rivoli. After the tour you exit under the pyramid, so the Tuileries Garden, the Rue de Rivoli arcades and the Pont des Arts across the river are all within a few minutes on foot.