Visiting Louvre Museum in Paris has become a cliché for anyone travelling to Paris. Hence, I’m barely surprised by the lines at its entrances when we were there. Since this is one of the world’s largest museums. One could spend one whole day here but barely scratches the surface. What we are talking here is a massive area of over 650,000 square feet displaying tons of art pieces! The whole place is like a labyrinth which I see it as the ultimate place for a game of hide-and-seek LOL.
Of course, not everyone is arty-farty kind, yours truthfully included. Spending a bulk of travel time in a museum does not add up for me. But if you only want to visit one museum in Europe, let it be Louvre Museum.
Even knowing that the place is gonna be huge, I’m still found myself overwhelmed by the vast area of the museum and it’s tricky to move around with the given Louvre map. The 3 wings which form a U-shape are Denon, Sully, and Richelie. Plus the different floors in each wing complicate things a bit further. And is it humanly possible to completely cover all the exhibits? I wonder.
Like everybody else, one of the main objectives to visit Louvre was to catch a glimpse of Mona Lisa. The masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci is up right there among the famous paintings in the Louvre. So we started with the Denon exhibition wing and was greeted by the famous Greek god Nike aka Winged Victory of Samothrace at these stairs.
Upon reaching Mona Lisa, there were a massive amount of people trying to get a close-up shot or selfies with her.
Though my visit was more of a blitz, I am totally amazed by the sheer size of the museum and its priceless art collections. Can’t say I like them all since Art preference is very subjective. But here are some paintings which kinda stood out for me.
And of course, some of the sculptures…
My favourite place of them all is the exquisitely decorated Napoleon III Apartments at Richelieu exhibition wing. And I find it as opulent as the Chateau of Versailles, but maybe on a smaller scale.
Entering via Carrousel du Louvre
Most people will seek to enter via the Louvre Pyramid main entrance, which is why the queue is always the longest there. If you are visiting Louvre via the Metro, alight at Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre. Which you will see the underground shopping mall – Carrousel du Louvre. The mall is directly linked to the Louvre, so just follow the signage until you see La Pyramide Inversée aka the inverted pyramid. The queues here are usually shorter compared to the one at the main entrance.
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