Louvre, Paris

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The Louvre (French: Musée du Louvre or simply: Le Louvre) is a very big museum in the center of the French capital Paris. It lies just north of the Seine. It consists of three wings: the Richelieu wing, the Sully Wing and the Denon wing. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is probably the most famous piece from the collection of the Louvre. The museum is part of the Reunion des Musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysees. It has for years been the world's most visited museum.

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The longest queues are at the Pyramid main entrance. Not funny when it is raining as you can see from my photos nr.1 and 2. Avoid this entrance.
There are underground entrances by the Galerie du Carousel (99 rue de Rivoli) with a connexion to the Metro station and by the Carousel gardens. There are also queues but at least you will remain dry. In this underground Galerie du Carousel you will find a Tourist Welcome Centre where you can buy your 2, 4 or 6 days museum pass.

If you have a Paris Museum Pass, enter by the Passage Richelieu for groups and visitors with museum pass. Go straight to the security control and don't get mixed up with the groups standing there.
Another point is to get there close to the opening at 9.00 h. The longest queues are between 10 and 12 h. Absolutely avoid the first Sunday of every month; the entrance is free and the queues start well before 9.00 h.
Once you are in you have to buy your ticket (10 €) at a desk or machine and you might well be queuing again! My photo nr 3 shows the Napoleon Hall with the ticket desks at 17 h. in August 2007 on a Wednesday when the museum was open until 21.30 h.
Of course the length of the queues depend on the season: high season at the museum is spring and summer, less crowded later. In 2009 there were 8,5 millions visitors, an average of 27.000/day.
Good luck - bon courage!

NOTE: ENTRY BY THE PORTE DES LIONS with no lines (up till now!).
This entrance is located at the end of the Denon wing near the Seine with the Pont Royal and the Quai des Tuileries (see photos n° 4 and 5).
I first tested this entrance in July 2008 at 11.30 h and there was no line and only few visitors entering here. End August 2009 I entered around 10 h by this Porte des Lions. I was alone to enter by this entrance and got immediately my ticket after the security check. Tickets (10 €) can be bought at the desk or from a machine. From here you can reach La Joconde/Mona Lisa by a short cut (see my tip).
Porte des Lions entrance: open from 9 to 17.30 h., except Friday.

Another question: HOW MUCH TIME DOES ONE NEED TO VISIT LE LOUVRE?
There are 3 options:
1° The one day program. This is for well trained joggers. They will see it all but look at nothing. (The difference between the French "voir" and "regarder").
2° The program for amateurs of art and history. They need 2 or 3 days to see it all and look at the best art works.
3° Connoisseurs need 1 - 2 weeks. I'm following that program over a 20 years period. The problem with me is that on my spaced visits I forget what I saw the years before and I start again the grand tour. I'll never finish with Le Louvre!

Open:
Monday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday: from 9 to 18 h.
Wednesday, Friday: from 9 to 22 h.
Closed on Tuesday

Entrances to the museum:
Pyramid and Galerie du Carrousel entrances: from 9 to 22 h.
Passage Richelieu entrance: from 9 to 18 h.
Porte des Lions entrance: from 9 to 17.30 h., except Friday.

Price tickets for the Permanent Collections (2012).
€10: full-day access to the Louvre, except for temporary exhibitions in the Hall Napoléon
also valid for the Musée Eugène Delacroix.
Free less than 18 yr.
Free 18 - 25 yr from the EU.
Free for all on the first Sunday of every month.

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Room 12 on the ground floor (first photo) is a large room divided into four sections, showing the remains of sanctuaries from various sites and all epochs of ancient Egyptian history, to give an idea of the structure and function of a temple and the ceremonies that took place there.

Further on, in rooms 18 and 19, there is an alphabetical guide to the ancient Egyptian gods, including their appearance, their attributes, their roles, all illustrated with authentic figurines made of metal, ceramics or stone.

There is also an exhibit of mummified animals. The audio guide said there were various reasons for having animals mummified and placed in the tombs. First, they were the beloved pets of the person who had passed away. Second, they were intended as emergency rations, to be eaten by the dead person in case there was a famine in the afterlife. Third, the animals might be needed in the afterlife as sacrifices to the gods. Or the animals themselves might be worshiped as gods. In some eras, numerous animals seem to have been raised for the express purpose of being mummified.

Second photo: This statue of the god Horus, in the shape of a man with the head of a falcon, is on display in room 7 and is part of the thematic circuit about religious and funerary beliefs. Originally Horus seems to have been holding a vase in his hands, with ritual water to purify the king in ceremonies.

Third photo: Room 11 contains a row of six of the sphinxes which were set up along the allée leading to the temple Sérapéum de Saqqara in Egypt in the 4th or 3rd century BC. (These were found and dug out of the sand by workers under the direction of Auguste Mariette in 1851. Later, in 1869, Mariette was asked to suggest a plot for an opera about ancient Egypt, and his idea was accepted as the basis for the opera Aida by Giuseppe Verdi.)

Next review from January 2012: The royal tomb

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Three of the major museums in Paris have divided up the History of Art among themselves. The Louvre, being the largest, is responsible for Art from the earliest times up to 1847. The Musée d'Orsay takes over for the remarkable sixty-six years from 1848 to 1914, and the Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou shows works from 1914 to the present -- though this is not a hard and fast rule, and there is inevitably some overlapping.

I can think of one other city that has a similar division of epochs among its major museums, namely Munich, which has the Alte Pinakothek for European paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries, the Neue Pinakothek for the 19th century and the Pinakothek der Moderne for 20th and 21st century art.

There are 35,000 works of art on display in the Louvre, so it's sort of like the internet -- you can't possibly see them all, so you have to navigate to see what you want, or take potluck. And don't let yourself be overwhelmed by the sheer masses of fantastic artworks! My first photo is from room 39 on the second floor of the Richelieu wing, showing Dutch masterpieces from the second half of the 17th century.

Second photo: Most people enter the Louvre through the Pyramid in the central courtyard, but it goes faster if you buy a Museum Pass or simply an advance admission ticket, both of which are available at the fnac stores or at the Civette du Carrousel in the Carrousel du Louvre. These allow you to enter the museum more quickly through the priority entrance in Passage Richelieu. (When planning your visit, please remember that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.)

Third photo: Le Pont du Rialto (Rialto Bridge in Venice) by Antonio Canal, aka CANALETTO (1697- 1768), in hall C on the second floor of the Sully wing.

Fourth photo: La nuit ; un port de mer au clair de lune (The night ; a seaport by moonlight), painted in 1771 by Joseph Vernet (1714-1789). On display in room 52 on the second floor of the Sully wing.

Fifth photo: The Galerie d'Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) has recently been restored after three years of work funded by a corporate sponsor. It is in hall 66 on the first floor of the Denon wing.

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Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) was the French scholar who founded the study of Egyptology by being the first to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. He published his translation and analysis of the Rosetta Stone hieroglyphs in 1822 and 1824, and shortly thereafter he took on the task of establishing a new department of Egyptian antiquities in four rooms of the Louvre.

This department now fills thirty large rooms at the east end of the Louvre, in what is now called the Sully Wing. The seventeen rooms on the ground floor, plus two in the basement for particularly heavy exhibits, are organized into a “thematic circuit”, using authentic relics and artworks to illustrate and explain the topics of agriculture, hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, writing, arts and crafts, domestic life, temples, funeral rites and gods in ancient Egypt. Then up on the first floor there is a “chronological circuit” showing outstanding examples of Egyptian art from the earliest to the latest periods of ancient Egypt.

The Sphinx, in the first photo, is in room 1 and is at the beginning of the thematic circuit. From here a staircase (or an elevator) leads to the many thematic exhibits on the ground floor. You can easily spend a full day (as we did in January 2012) going through the thirty exhibition rooms with the help of the audio guide and the many text panels.

I was a bit disappointed with the audio guide at first, because it didn’t have much to say about the first few rooms. But soon more and more audio guide numbers started turning up on the displays, and finally I had to pick and choose because there wasn’t enough time in just one day to hear them all in full.

After several hours, somewhere up on the first floor, my audio guide suddenly stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. To trade it in for a new one I had to retrace my steps (there weren’t any shortcuts) to get back to the entrance to the Sully Wing, and in doing this I came to realize once again that the Louvre is a HUGE place, even if you are spending the day only in one department at one end of the museum. (They were very nice about giving me a new one, of course.)

Second and third photos: These models, in room 3, show people rowing on the Nile or poling through shallow water. The models were found in graves, perhaps intended to provide transportation in the afterlife for the person who had died.

Fourth photo: This lovely swimming girl is holding a covered spoon in the shape of a duck. The duck’s wings are the cover of the spoon. Lots of these have been found, mostly from the New Empire (1400-1200 BC), but none of them have any trace of any contents so it is not clear what they were used for. One theory is that these might have been women’s make-up boxes. This particular one is on display in room 9, display case 3. (By the way, there is a similar covered spoon upstairs in room 24, also with a swimming girl and a duck, but the upstairs girl is not nearly as lovely as this one and neither is the duck.)

Fifth photo: Above the swimming girl holding the duck, in room 9, display case 3, there is a figurine labeled “Spoon in the form of a young girl carrying a vase”. The poor girl is tiny compared to the huge vase she has to carry, and in her right hand she is also holding a bag. She seems to be standing on a barrel of some sort. To her right and left are other fancy spoons or small bowls, some in the shape of ducks.

Next review from January 2012: Gods and temples

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Probably the most famous statue in the Egyptian collection of the Louvre is this one of The Seated Scribe, in room 22 on the first floor.

The audio guide explained that the scribes at that time were very important and influential officials, sometimes even relatives of the pharaoh. This scribe has an unusually realistic looking face, especially the eyes. In his right hand he was holding a brush which has since been lost. He has a well-fed appearance, which was a sign of wealth and power.

Second photo: For comparison, here is another – much less realistic and expressive – scribe from a thematic exhibition on writing techniques in ancient Egypt. This is in room 6 on the ground floor.

Third photo: These two are in room 24. They are identified as Sény or Sénynéfer, Bureau Chief of the King, and his wife.

Fourth photo: The pharaoh Thoutmosis IV, who ruled from around 1401 to 1391 BC. (In room 24.)

Next review from January 2012: Musée Charles X

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The original Louvre was a fortress, built starting in 1190 at the behest of King Philippe Auguste (1165-1223).

The fortress was at one end of Philippe Auguste's wall, a system of city fortifications that he ordered built because he didn't want the city to be left undefended while he went off to fight in the Crusades.

Remains of the medieval Louvre fortress and moat have been excavated and preserved, and can be seen today on the underground level of the Sully Wing of the Louvre, on the way to the department of Egyptian antiquities.

Next review from January 2012: Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre

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After twelve densely packed rooms of the thematic tour of ancient Egypt, a long staircase (or an elevator for people with restricted mobility) leads down to room 13, where a huge royal tomb is on display. It is the red granite tomb of pharaoh Ramses III, who ruled from 1186–1155 BC. The room is also identified as the crypt of the god Osiris.

Like the Sphinx in room 1, the royal tomb is in the basement because of its weight. The museum curators prefer to have the extremely heavy objects resting directly on the ground, rather than on a higher floor where their weight might endanger the building. Another reason is that at ground level over these rooms there are pedestrian entrances to the courtyard.

Second photo: Drawings and hieroglyphics on the tomb. The top row of drawings shows some violent scenes. In the bottom row at the left it might be a man plowing a field.

Third photo: The colonnade on the east wall of the Louvre. The archway in the center is open (usually) and leads to the inner courtyard. Underneath in the basement is room 13, with the royal tomb. All the rooms behind and below the colonnade on the ground floor and the first floor are devoted to Egyptian antiquities.

Fourth photo: The colonnade at night.

Next review from January 2012: The Seated Scribe