Louvre Museum

The Louvre is less a building than a stack of eight centuries. Philip II began a fortress here in the late 12th century to guard Paris from the west, and its lower walls can still be seen in the museum's basement. Charles V turned the fortress into a residence. Francis I began rebuilding it as a French Renaissance palace from 1546, and successive monarchs stretched it along the Seine until Louis XIV left for Versailles in 1682. The Revolution made the empty palace a public museum. It opened on 10 August 1793 with a little over five hundred paintings, most of them from the royal collection or confiscated from the Church and émigrés.

The museum grew with France's fortunes. Napoleon's campaigns filled it with works seized across Europe and Egypt, and it briefly bore his name, though much of that loot went back after Waterloo. The 19th century brought the Egyptian collection first curated by Champollion and the Assyrian galleries. Under Napoleon III, the architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel built the great wings around the Cour Napoléon. The modern face came with President Mitterrand's Grand Louvre project. I. M. Pei designed the glass pyramid as a new entrance over an underground hall, which opened in 1989. In 1993 the finance ministry's former offices in the Richelieu wing opened as galleries, the largest single expansion in the museum's history.

Today the Louvre holds roughly half a million objects, of which around 35,000 are on show across eight departments, from Near Eastern and Egyptian antiquities to Islamic art and European paintings. The celebrated pieces are the Mona Lisa, which Francis I acquired for the royal collection, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the head of the Daru staircase. Much of the pleasure lies elsewhere, though: in the Galerie d'Apollon, the Assyrian reliefs, the Egyptian rooms, or the medieval foundations in the basement. With about nine million visitors in 2025, it is the most visited museum in the world. Crowding is a constant issue, and the Louvre – New Renaissance plan, whose architects were chosen in 2026, adds a second entrance at the eastern Colonnade and a separate room for the Mona Lisa.

The museum's recent history has been eventful. In October 2025 thieves used a truck-mounted lift to reach a window of the Galerie d'Apollon and escaped with eight pieces of the French crown jewels in a few minutes. The director resigned early in 2026. The surrounding city needs little introduction. The Louvre anchors the Right Bank of central Paris, with the Tuileries Gardens beside it and the Seine along its southern flank.

Getting there

The museum is in the 1st arrondissement, in the centre of Paris. The nearest Métro stations are Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre (lines 1 and 7) and Louvre–Rivoli (line 1). The closest airport is Paris-Orly (ORY), about 15 km away in a straight line. Paris–Charles de Gaulle is the city's other major airport. The main entrance is under the pyramid, with access also from the underground Carrousel du Louvre. Booking a time slot online is recommended.