buy louvre ticket from website or other? best skip the line for july?

Noon is the worst time of day in terms of crowds. If you want to minimize crowds get there very early or 30 minutes before closing (they stop admitting people at closing; those already inside get another 45 mins or so).

The Louvre's underground Palais Royal metro entrance is less busy than the pyramid entrance.

If you plan to see several museums while in Paris, consider getting the Paris Museum Pass. It gives you skip-the-line admission to almost all the city's museums. You can buy the Pass either on-line, at the airport TI, or at museums covered by the pass.

Some parts of the Louvre have AC, others do not.

so, for a day that the Louvre closes @ 6pm (thurs in July), if we cannot get there before 9am, what about a 4pm ticket time? That would leave us about 2.5 hours. We would be willing to only go for 2.5 hrs, if the crowds would be substantially less.

The Louvre closes precisely when it is time to close, this means they roll up the galleries starting at 5:30. Everyone is out on the street at 6 not just leaving. I would never get a timed ticket for 4 on a day it closed at 6 -- you may not have more than about an hour and a half. If you get a timed ticket, it doesn't matter what time you go in terms of a line. You will enter at that time. If you have a museum pass you can also use the bypass at the Pyramid entrance. Kids go in with parents and if they are not close to age 17 i.e. look like kids they won't be asked for ID (always wise to carry copies of everyone's passports just in case.)

I spent 3 full days in the Louvre during the great heat wave of August 2003 when the temperatures were up to 105F for most of a week and didn't get very cool at night either. The Louvre is uneven in its AC but MUCH better than the alternatives when it is hot. Some of the galleries will be cool, some will be warm, but if it is hot outside they will be cooler than that. The old archeological levels of the palace foundations are quite cool. I found myself standing on the floor grids with cool air in some of the warmer galleries.

You have a couple of other alternatives to skip the line without buying a ticket on the Louvre website or buying the Paris Museum Pass.

1) Buy a ticket downstairs in the entry hall from one of the kiosks (access the museum from the metro station Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre on Line 1 and follow the signs -- you'l enter via the shopping mall Carrousel du Louvre.

2) Stop at a FNAC store (there's one on the Champs-Elysées, one in Gare de Lyon, one across from Gare St Lazare) and buy your ticket there and then enter again via the underground Carrousel du Louvre/metro entrance.

The FNAC tickets do not have a timed entrance. They're good for anytime the museum is open for a year. That's curious that the Louvre website only sells timed tickets.

The line at the Carrousel entrance can be long nowadays since everyone know about it; it is not the ticket line that is the drag, it is the security line. So if you want to avoid that having a ticket ahead (not nec timed ticket) or the pass allow you to go to the bypass at the Pyramid entrance and skip the long security line. They make this clear on the web site now.

The museum also has evening hours on Wednesday and Friday.

So if you want to avoid that having a ticket ahead (not nec timed ticket) or the pass allow you to go to the bypass at the Pyramid entrance and skip the long security line.
I don't understand this. So, if we get an advanced ticket, we can bypass security line? Does having a timed ticket help? If so, we could get one for when it first opens for those who really want to go.

I think Janet means the security line at the main entrance might be shorter than the one at the metro entrance.