More than just the Mona Lisa

The Musée du Louvre—One of the world's greatest museums

Anyone up for the greatest museum on Earth? The Grand Louvre—a former royal palace opened to the public as an art gallery when the Revolution struck—has 60,000 square meters of galleries, 5 millions visitors annually, and over 30,000 works on display spanning 3 millennia. In a word: big.

Besides one of the world's top painting galleries, the Louvre also houses a remarkable collection of antiquities from Greece, Etruria, Rome, Egypt, and the Orient; a sculpture section that boasts two of Michelangelo's Slaves; and a fine decorative arts division.

It would take about three days to properly scratch the surface of all seven departments. Heck, it takes at least half a day merely to walk through the halls to see da Vinci's enigmatically smiling Mona Lisa, that ancient Greek armless beauty Venus de Milo, and the dramatic Winged Victory of Samothrace—just the 3 most famous of many instantly recognizable artistic icons that call the Louvre home.

The floor plans and information desks on site will help you get a handle on the basic layout and plan your visit, but here's one tip. The Louvre's problem is that there are too many masterpieces. To avoid aesthetic overload, and since you can only absorb so much, on a first visit you will probably have to pretty much ignore most of the works you're passing—pieces that might have been the pride of a lesser museum—in order to devote your art appreciation energies to the greatest hits.

These include an incredible five more da Vinci paintings (the Virgin of the Rocks is stupendous), fragments from Athens' Parthenon, Ingres' The Turkish Bath, Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, Vermeer's Lacemaker, Self-portraits by Dürer and Rembrandt, one-third of Uccello's Battle of San Romano (the other thirds are in Florence and London), Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, and David's Coronation of Napoléon I.

Look, if you have the time, try to take in the Louvre over several visits. In the long run, it's worth the multiple admissions (though you needn't pay over and over if you use the highly recommended Carte Musées et Monuments).

A few tips: it's open late Wednesday nights (rather than closing at 6pm, it closes at 9:45pm), and admission is free (and the museum crowded) the first Sudnay of every month.

Main entrance: under the glass pyramid in the Cour Napoléon courtyard, between the qaui du Louvre and rue de Rivoli.
(Métro: Palais-Royal, Musée du Louvre)
www.louvre.fr