Day Trip to the Louvre
The Louvre Museum
Home to the Mona Lisa and countless other pieces of priceless artwork, the Louvre is not only the most famous museum but also the grandest. With gilded, mural-clad walls and ceilings, the galleries themselves often rival the majesty of the artwork displayed within them. Equally astounding is the sheer size of the Louvre. At over 782,000 square feet, it is the world’s largest art museum, boasting approximately 38,000 items in its collection (source). One would be hard-pressed to see all of the Louvre over the course of several visits, let alone within a single day. Thus, when planning a day trip to the museum, it is imperative that you do so with the mindset that you will not be able to see everything, which is precisely what my husband and I did for our visit earlier this year. What follows is an overview of our time at the Louvre – may you find it helpful in planning your own visit!
Morning: Make Our Way to the Louvre and Begin Our Exploration of the Museum
After a simple breakfast of oatmeal and fruit at our Airbnb, we set out for the Louvre. Conveniently, our Airbnb was located only an 18-minute walk away from the museum, so we did not have to bother with renting a bike or hopping on the subway.
We arrived at the Louvre a few minutes before our timed entry of 10:00am, and even though we had tickets, we still had to wait in line. The line, however, moved fairly quickly; our total wait time was under 10 minutes.
Helpful Tidbit — Try to book a ticket with an entry time in the morning – the earlier, the better. Although there are still plenty of visitors in the morning, their numbers are far smaller than those of the afternoon crowd.
Crowds at the Louvre’s entrance
Once inside, we grabbed a map from the information desk before making our way to the Italian Renaissance gallery to do the super touristy thing: see the Mona Lisa. Between the map and all of the signs directing visitors to the Mona Lisa, finding da Vinci’s most renowned painting was quite easy. We knew that we had reached our destination when we saw a staggeringly long line of people.
The queue to see the Mona Lisa
We had just about resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be standing in line for an obscene amount of time when we noticed something – there was a viewing area to the side of the roped-off queue. Sure, it would not get us front and center to the Mona Lisa, but it would free up a considerable chunk of time that we could then use to explore other areas of the museum. So, we walked up along the side of the cordoned-off area and got as close to the painting as we could from that vantage point.
Our not-quite-center-but-good-enough view of the Mona Lisa
After obtaining our requisite photo of the Mona Lisa, we meandered through the rest of the Renaissance wing, seeing masterpiece after masterpiece, including several additional pieces by da Vinci.
Da Vinci’s La Belle Ferronnière
We spent the next hour wandering through various galleries, including the iconic Galerie d’Apollon, a sumptuous room with vaulted ceilings and walls covered in intricate carvings and breathtaking paintings. This gallery also houses the French Crown Jewels and Louis XIV’s collection of hardstone vessels.
The Galerie d’Apollon
Afternoon: Lunch and Amble through More of the Museum
Around noon, we broke for lunch at Angelina, one of the restaurants inside the Louvre. The restaurant was fairly empty when we arrived, but by the time we left an hour later, it was starting to fill up. With regards to the food, it was unexpectedly delicious. Accustomed to less-than-stellar food at American museums, I’d had rather low expectations for our lunch at Angelina, so I was pleasantly surprised to find house-made pasta featuring fresh mozzarella and pesto on the menu. As if that were not enough to win me over, they also served real coffee versus the americanos masquerading as coffees that most places in France serve. Plus, our waiter was amazing. He was incredibly friendly, and he had even spent some time in Boston, a fact over which we instantly bonded.
Our lunch at Angelina
Refueled, we resumed our stroll through the Louvre, beginning with the lavish apartments of Napoleon III. These rooms were so opulent as to be almost obscene in their extravagance.
One of the lavish rooms inside Napoleon III’s apartments
From there, we meandered through galleries of art from the Middle Ages, including one that housed an impressive collection of tapestries.
Taking the time to sit and appreciate the grandeur of one of the medieval tapestries
We also visited the Darius palace rooms, which featured, among other things, colorful brick friezes and massive limestone columns crowned with carvings of bulls.
A bull-topped column inside the Darius palace rooms
We rambled around for a bit more, viewing several galleries filled with art from antiquity.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace statue
Shortly before 3:00pm, we left the Louvre, having spent nearly five hours at the museum. While we saw a fair amount during that time, we barely scratched the surface of the Louvre’s collection. So many parts of the museum remain to be explored, and I cannot wait to return one day to continue our exploration of it.
I hope you found this post helpful (or at least entertaining), and as always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below!
-Julia
P.S. Curious what else I got up to while in France? Check out my What to Do in Paris: A 6-Day Itinerary post.
