How to Visit the Louvre: Tickets, Entrances and a Route That Actually Works

The Louvre is the rare museum where most of the outcome is decided before you arrive. Not because it is difficult — the building is well signposted and the staff are used to first-timers — but because it is enormous, ticketed by the half hour, and served by more than one door, so a visitor who makes three small decisions in advance walks in while the visitor who made none is still deciding which queue is theirs. Here is what those decisions are, in the order you actually face them.

Step one: treat the timed slot as an appointment

Entry to the Louvre is booked for a specific time window, and that window is the single most useful thing you own. It does not guarantee you walk straight in — security screening still happens, and a busy morning still has a line — but it puts you in a queue for people with a slot rather than a queue for people hoping. Book it online before you leave home, and note the exact time somewhere you will find it again, because it will be on a phone screen you are holding in one hand along with everything else.

Two scheduling details matter more than most guides admit. The museum closes one day of the week — traditionally Tuesday — and there is usually one evening a week when it stays open late. Both are worth confirming on the official site as you plan, because they move the whole shape of a short trip: the late evening in particular is the closest thing the Louvre offers to a quiet visit, and it is wasted on anyone who only learns about it after booking a Tuesday.

Step two: pick your door before you leave the hotel

The pyramid in the courtyard is the entrance everyone photographs and therefore the entrance everyone joins. It is not the only one, and on a busy day it is rarely the fastest.

• The pyramid — the main entrance in the Cour Napoléon. Iconic, central, and the default for anyone walking in off the street. Fine early or late; slowest in the middle of the day.
• The Carrousel du Louvre — the underground shopping concourse reached from the métro or the rue de Rivoli. It brings you in under the courtyard, out of the rain, and often past a shorter line.
• Secondary doors — the museum opens additional entrances at its own discretion, and some tour operators are allocated one. Useful when your ticket names it; never something to plan a morning around on spec.
• Métro — Palais-Royal–Musée du Louvre puts you inside the Carrousel without crossing the courtyard at all, which is worth knowing in January and in August for opposite reasons.

Whichever you choose, arriving very early for your slot does not help. Turning up half an hour before your window generally means standing outside your own reservation. Ten to fifteen minutes is the sweet spot.

Step three: choose one wing, not three

The collection is arranged across three wings that meet at the central hall: Denon, Sully and Richelieu. Denon holds the Italian paintings and the large French canvases and is where the crowds concentrate. Sully wraps around the oldest part of the building and holds the Greek and Egyptian antiquities, plus the medieval foundations in the basement. Richelieu — the wing most visitors never set foot in — holds the northern European paintings, the Near Eastern collections and the sculpture courtyards under glass.

A first visit that tries to sample all three ends up as a corridor tour of the building. A first visit that commits to one wing, walks it properly and then dips into whatever is adjacent almost always ends better. Write down six works before you go in, not twenty; six is roughly what fits into a couple of hours at a pace where you actually look at things.

Nobody leaves the Louvre wishing they had seen slightly more of it. They leave wishing they had looked properly at less.

The practical things that slow people down

• Bags — large luggage and oversized bags are not admitted, and the cloakroom is a queue of its own. Travel light; do not plan a Louvre morning around a suitcase and a left-luggage errand.
• Distance — the galleries add up to a genuinely long walk on hard floors. Shoes matter here more than at any other Paris sight.
• Re-entry — assume you cannot leave and come back on the same ticket unless you have checked otherwise.
• Eating — there are cafés inside, and they are busy at exactly the time you will want one. A visit timed to end at lunch rather than to span it avoids the problem entirely.
• Closures — individual rooms close for works and loans without much notice. Take the day’s paper map at the entrance and check your shortlist against it before you set off.

The reason this planning pays off out of proportion to the effort is that the Louvre is not really one museum — it is a palace that several museums moved into, and it is laid out like a palace rather than like a building designed to move visitors through a story. There is no single intended route, which is why a visitor with a plan feels like the place was built for them and a visitor without one feels lost in a very beautiful airport. Ten minutes of decisions before you go buys the whole difference.