Le Louvre Review

Le Louvre located in the heart of Paris is perhaps the most well known museum in the World. Thanks to it’s architecture and these famous Pyramides of glass but also because it is home of the most famous painting in the world : The Mona Lisa.

But how does this museum compare to other institutions in the world and is it a must visit place when coming to Paris ?

This is what we we’ll try to answer for you in this article. This is not a review of the art present in the galleries since we are not specialists. More an overview as a touristic experience.

The Location

Paris is quite a beautiful city. One reason for that : it has been built uniformly by the elite at some point and time in the past. It gives it a quite homogeneous architecture and more than that most monuments are aligned.

The Louvre for example, is aligned with le Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde and l’Arc de Triomphe, etc. This makes Paris quite an interesting place to walk around if you are willing to spend to calories.

Le Louvre is almost located in the perfect center of the city, so it’s dead on the 1st district of Paris. The districts of Paris go up in number like a snail shell or the golden ratio.

In this district you’ll find a lot of amazing things to see : Rue Saint Honoré, Rivoli Street, Pont des arts, Colonnes de Buren and Palais Royal, Opera Garnier, etc.

Le Louvre and it’s main entry is located under the massive Pyramide. It has something like 4 levels and it’s so big that you’ll probably don’t even have the time to check everything in one day.

It’s quite a beautiful museum as well. Some parts of it are so luxurious that it is almost indecent. The space is quite accessible for the people with limited mobility as well.

I’ve personnaly been to a lot of museums notably the Museum of Natural History in New York and to be honest nothing compares to Le Louvre when it comes to scale and infrastructure. There’s even a shopping mall inside with restaurants.

There are a lot of stairs, elevators, escalators. It’s basically like a Giant Mall or some Giant Hausmanian buldings with a huge underground area.

The Experience

We came to The Louvre during fashion week, so it was a nightmare to park. There was also at this time some sort of anti-pollution action which made every parking spaces around the museum unavailable. We littereally had to park 15 minutes away near the Opera Garnier to find a free spot and the trafic was terrible, stucked for 30 minutes in one street. Do not go by car during fashion week.

Once we parked, we went for a quick lunch in Saint-Anne street and walk to the main entrance of the Louvre. There, a guide saw us with the stroller and made us jump the line, I have to say the staff from Le Louvre is very concerned with the well being of Families and babies.

I would recommend you to buy your tickets online to skip both the lines outside and inside to buy the tickets. We didn’t too much time but we were lucky. If we wouldn’t have a child we would have waited a very long time.

Price of admission

One ticket is 15 euros and of course babies are free to enter in the Museum. Once you get your ticket inside you can get a map in the main area under the Pyramide. The maps comes in the most used languages : French, English, Chinese, Arabic, etc. Of course no Vietnamese map but obviously they can’t produce as much maps as there are languages.

Multiple spaces

Main section of the Louvre under the Pyramid

In the museum there are many spaces you can visit, so there are as many entry as there are sections, four if I recall correctly. They say you can go out 2 or 3 times to get some food and change section. Being inside the Louvre can feel like being in a Maze. Sometimes the best way to get somewhere is to use an exit, so be careful about how many time you go back to the main area.

Egyptian art or Sully section

Yooyi and I in front of some Egyptian Art

We started with the Egyptian art which is a quite big space, in the underground you’ll find some of the pyramid constructions, it will give you a scale of what the real thing is. It’s quite impressive. The upper levels will show you some of the famous art such as Sarcophagus, Papyrus, Wall writings and other famous Statues. I personnally really enjoy this section and was amazed at how advanced this civilation was before JC.

French Paintings

The French Paintings section was quite impressive because of the shear size of some of the work. Some paintings are so big that you can’t put it anywhere else than in a museum or a huge wall. It’s billboard size paintings with an extreme level of details. We wonder how long it took for the painters to finish their work, quite impressive.

Richelieu Section

The Richelieu section is quite interesting, it has some decorative art like statues, I think many of Rodin’s work is exposed there. There is also a section for oriental art which is interesting. We don’t know why there are no asian pieces of art or not many in this museum.

I think in the section was also the appartements of Napoléon III which was an Emperor of France. It’s one of my favorite area and I was impressed by the decorations and the dinner table was something out of this world. You can’t really fable how emperor use to live at their time and the huge banket they use to organize.

The Italian Gallery

The Italian Gallery was for us the main attraction of the Museum. Note that it’s a jam packed area so most people will be there looking for a famous da Vinci Painting.

Even if I am impress by French Paintings, I have to say that Italians can be absolutely magical when it comes to art.

This section benefits from a beautiful natural lightning, in here the paintings are absolutely gorgeous and you can find some Roman busts as well.

One of the most famous painting : the coronation of Napoléon III by Jacques-Louis David 1804

One of the paintings people love to gather around is the coronation of Napoléon III by Jacques-Louis David 1804. Every french students have seen this painting through their history books. Funny fact this coronation happened in Notre-Dame de Paris.

The most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa or La Joconde by Leonardo da Vinci. This room and more pricesely this painting have its own waiting lines.

It is well protected by a bullet proof glass, no wonder this painting is estimated between 1 and 2 billions euros. Of course this is a national treasure and is invaluable and even in the past an italian thief tried to get it back from France by stealing it.

Napoleon III Appartments

We will end up this review with the Napoléon the 3rd’s appartments. This is one of the section that left a huge impression on me. It’s hard to fathom how wealthy kings and emperors were in the past. They basically shared all the money from all the population.

They could basically decorate their appartments without any limit of budget or scale. The ballroom and diners must have been something quite special and I can imagine that these parties were a daily event.

Diner table of Napoléon III’s appartments

This section gave me a hint of what the golden age of culture was in France and why the elite enjoy and tries to preserve this culture. France is definitely a country that has explored the art of luxury farther than almost any other country.

Verdict

9.0 out of 10

Le Louvre is simply a must visit Museum in France. If you are passionate about art and history, this place can be a dream place.

I think a one day visit is not enough to really explore everything. We in only half a day were already overwhelmed by the quantity of art present in each section.

Walking tour of Le Louvre

The service in Le Louvre is quite nice even if the price for food inside is through the roof. A bottle of water is 4.5 euros and it’s only 75cl for example. People are very helpful and every room have a lift for people with reduced mobility or people with a baby.

It’s like a Disney World but for intellectuals. There are so much things to see that it’s becoming hard to take the time to pay attention to anything.

Perhaps the only downside of the Museum is this, you’ll have to come at least multiple times to really enjoy it and unfortunately there a other interesting museum in Paris Alone.

Also this place use to be free on the first Sunday of every month for youngsters and disadvantaged but not anymore.