Best place to but tickets for Lourve

There are at least a couple routes to buying tickets in person:
Pyramid entrance - arrive later in the day thru this portal, when crowds tend to wane (museum is open late Wed & Fri) and chances are that it won't be as busy (I did this in mid-June 2016). After security screens you, descend the stairs to any of the ticket booths (yes, they each sell tickets for the entire museum, not just the hall they are adjacent to).

Carrousel mall entrance: same ticket booths in the end, but this way will skip the Pyramid. Enter thru 99 Rue de Rivoli, descend down the stairs thru the vast undeground mall (security will screen you here as well), et voila - you will approach the ticket booths.

We enter through the Carousel entrance, buy tickets from machines or clerks. Tickets are checked at the entrances of the wings. We exit through the Pyramid. It is particularly beautiful rising upon the escalators at night into the Pyramid with the illuminated palace surrounding it.

The other alternative is to buy a ticket in advance from a branch of FNAC - a French books/music/electronics chain that also has ticket sales counters in its stores for many different types of events. There are many branches dotted all over Paris - to see them all just go to www.fnac.com, click on the icon at the top right that looks like a Google maps pointer, and type "Paris" in the right-hand search box on the screen that comes up.

Indeed FNAC stores are really practical for buying tickets. You can even buy ahead those for Paris in their Belgian stores too. Btw they also have an extensive choice of road maps and travel guides.

Thanks everyone for all the information. We enjoyed our visit to The Louvre yesterday and hope to get to Orsay tomorrow for free Sunday. :)

There appears to be tickets on line now (print at home) with entrance times which would suggest one can by-pass potential long security
lines? Has anyone used this method?

Bernie, time-specific tickets are available in advance from the Louvre website but to my knowledge, no one can avoid security check lines:

https://www.ticketlouvre.fr/louvre/b2c/index.cfm/home

Do note that the website states:

"The ticket purchased online is time-stamped and nominative, an identity document may be demanded. It is valid only for the chosen service, date and time. It is not a queue jump but gives access to the pyramid within half an hour of the time shown on the ticket. If the holder of the print@home ticket does not arrive within the allocated time slot for admission to the pyramid, they are subject to the same admission and waiting conditions as visitors without tickets."

Hi. We just came from Paris and had the time-stamped tickets. Our concierge at the hotel arranged them for us online. We were about 15 minutes late for our allotted time - a little confusion on our part due to construction and general American stupidity! Anyway, no one really looked at the time stamp that I could tell and the barcode reader didn't balk. We still went through security, but we sailed through.

This changes all the time at the Louvre but last I heard those with tickets, time stamped or otherwise, could use a designated queue at the Pyramid separate from the general long security queue. In the past the Richelieu entrance was for those with passes and the Caroussel open to everyone but quicker usually than the pyramid. Getting tickets is not the challenge at the Louvre, it is the long security line at the pyramid which we have always avoided with the Caroussel entrance.