Tours at the Louvre: A Closer Look

In previous visits to the Louvre, you’ve already paid your respects to the Louvre’s “Trois Grandes Dames”—Mona, Venus and Nike and their crowded galleries. Whew! Now that you’ve've whetted your appetite with the Louvre's celebrity masterpieces, our "Closer Look" tours will help you to establish a more meaningful relationship with the Louvre, as you explore in greater detail its rich rewards of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures.

• Fortress, Palace, Museum: The Architecture of the Louvre
• The History of Paris in Paintings at the Louvre
• The Louvre's Hidden Masterpieces

(Are you a first-time visitor to the Louvre? Traveling with a family? Or interested in a tour that surveys the breadth of the museum's collection? Find out about our "Big Picture" tours of the Louvre.)

Fortress, Palace, Museum: The Architecture of the Louvre

2.5-hour architecture tour. 4 person maximum.
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Visitors to Paris often make the obligatory trek out to Versailles, and yet right here in the city awaits an architectural monument with much deeper ties to the history of France. This 2.5-hour tour looks at the masterpiece that is the Louvre's architecture and interior design.

The Louvre is more than simply the largest museum in the world. The stones of the building are a collective symbol of French identity. This began in the middle ages, when lords swore an oath to the king on his “Great Tower of the Louvre.” Its majestic remains (depicted) are just one stop on this exploration of 800 years of history.

With your private guide, you’ll travel through that history by retracing the Louvre’s multiple lives as fortress, palace, and museum. Studying its mix of styles—from intimate Renaissance to opulent Second Empire—will also help you to understand the rest of the city’s evolution.

While rulers from Philippe-Auguste to Mitterand sought to leave their mark here, generations of artists, architects, and anonymous builders ended up leaving much more. The splendors they created are also tangible remnants of the spirit of their age.

Rates. 2.5-hour tour: €113 for individuals, or €98 per person for parties of two or more. Includes price of admission. €20 surcharge to guarantee that your party has a one-on-one tour with your guide without other parties. 4 person maximum.
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The History of Paris in Paintings at the Louvre

2.0-hour art tour. 4 person maximum.
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What is the best way to explore the incredibly rich and complex history of a deeply aesthetic city like Paris? We think the paintings at the Louvre are an ideal place to start.

This tour begins in the quiet French galleries of the Louvre’s Richelieu wing, where an exciting visual story of the city unfolds. The thoughts and ideas of its past residents are captured in these hard-to-find paintings that become suddenly accessible when you know where and how to look. In two hours, you will see 14th-century portraits of modest medieval leaders like Jean le Bon give way to the sublime propaganda of Napoleonic history painting in the 19th.

And what about ordinary Parisians? Artists like Watteau and Boucher mythologized their elegant art de vivre. Later, Delacroix would even make their revolutionary street fighting look romantic. They are only two of the countless storytellers at the Louvre who have captured Parisians in all their glorious colors. This tour follows the trail of their lives through five centuries of the city’s history.

Note: This tour is not available on Thursdays. (Due to Louvre staff shortages, some portions of the European galleries close on each day).

Rates. 2.0-hour tour: €105 for individuals, or €90 per person for parties of two or more. Includes price of admission. €20 surcharge to guarantee that your party has a one-on-one tour with your guide without other parties. 4 person maximum.
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Free download! Get a feel for our "History of Paris" Louvre tour. Download the October 2005 issue of Paris Notes, featuring "Paint the Town," an article by Paris Muse founder Ellen McBreen.

The Louvre's "Hidden" Masterpieces

2.0-hour art tour. 4 person maximum.
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Some of the most beautiful paintings in the Louvre—by Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer— are also the hardest to find! If you are interested in expanding your knowledge of the Louvre's European painting collections—whether this is your first or twenty-first visit—then this is the tour for you. While other visitors are fighting the crowds, we'll be exploring the "hidden" gems among the hundreds that hang in the Dutch, Flemish, and German galleries. We study masterpieces that many miss, but that Louvre curators would consider among the most important in their collections. Our painting-by-painting approach allows us to look carefully at each of these stunning images, and to discuss what they meant to the people who commissioned and collected them. The tour is designed to give you a better understanding of Northern European painting from the 15th to 18th centuries.

Note: This tour is not available on Friday evenings after 5:30pm, when a large portion of the paintings galleries are closed. (Due to Louvre staff shortages, some portions of the European galleries close on each day).

Rates. 2.0-hour tour: €105 for individuals, or €90 per person for parties of two or more. Includes price of admission. €20 surcharge to guarantee that your party has a one-on-one tour with your guide without other parties. 4 person maximum.
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