See the Louvre’s masterpieces with a private guide

Thirty-five thousand works across four hundred rooms, and about eight miles of gallery. Without a plan you will see the Mona Lisa and a great deal of your own feet. With a guide you see what you actually came for.

The building was a fortress, then a royal palace, and only became a museum in 1793 when the Revolution opened the royal collection to the public. That history is why the layout makes no sense: you are walking through several centuries of palace, not a purpose-built gallery.

A private guide does two things. They route you — the Denon wing for Italian painting and the Mona Lisa, Sully for the Venus de Milo and the medieval foundations, Richelieu for the Northern schools and the Napoleon III apartments — and they choose maybe fifteen works to actually look at rather than walk past.

The Mona Lisa is worth calibrating in advance. It is small, behind glass, at the far end of a crowded room, and you will get perhaps ninety seconds. Most people find the Vermeers, the Ingres, or the Winged Victory of Samothrace on the staircase the thing they remember.