Your experience starts at the Agencia France Tourisme, just a 3-minute walk from the Louvre. There, you'll meet your guide, receive your admission ticket with a pre-booked time slot, and listen to a brief introduction to the history of the museum and its past as a royal palace. Walking together to the group admission lane, you'll enter directly into the heart of the Louvre.
Inside the museum, your tour guide will take you on a carefully curated tour that combines the most iconic works with essential historical context, without trying to cover all the galleries. You'll start in the collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, where the celebrated Venus de Milo and other classical sculptures illustrate the origins of Western ideals of beauty and proportion.
As you climb the grand staircase, you will come upon the Winged Victory of Samothrace (Nike), dramatically positioned at the top, as if she had just arrived by sea. Your guide will explain how this ancient sculpture was discovered and why it remains one of the most striking works in the museum. The tour will pass through the Italian Renaissance galleries to the moment everyone has been waiting for: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Thanks to the small group format, your guide will help you navigate through the crowd and find a good vantage point. Later, he or she will explain the many mysteries of the painting, from the sfumato technique to the famous smile that has fascinated viewers for centuries.
Nearby, you'll see other masterpieces by great Italian artists that help you place the Mona Lisa in her artistic context. Next, you'll visit key galleries of French painting and large historical canvases that depict the power of kings, emperors, and revolutions. Depending on the day and access to the galleries, the guide may focus on iconic works of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, showing how artists used drama, color, and composition to tell powerful stories.
Throughout the tour, your guide will share anecdotes, symbolic details, and practical tips to help you enjoy the Louvre without feeling lost or overwhelmed.
The guided visit lasts approximately two hours and ends inside the museum. Afterwards, you are free to explore the same wing of the building on your own after the guided visit.
