Louvre without a guide?

Paris has so much to offer, there is no rule that you must visit the Louvre.

If you want to go to the Louvre, book your tickets in advance. You will still have to go through the security line, but it will be minutes, not hours.

If you are looking for a way to see the museum's highlights efficiently, consider booking the 90 minute English guided "Welcome to the Louvre" tour.

If that is too long of a commitment, take a look at the Louvre' s website. Is there a style or period of art you are interested in? Pick and choose a few things to see, study the website's floor plan so you can navigate yourself around the Louvre.

By the way, you could spend weeks at the Louvre and not see everything.

We have previously visited the Louvre with a guide on a group tour. We will be going again late this month on our own with our 28 year old son. We also do not want a guided tour this time. We have a reserved time entry and are going to use the Rick Steves walking tour of the Louvre on the app.

I have visited the Louvre at least three times at without a guide. I found the information desk to be quite helpful. I noticed they had a map/brochure of the more popular works that many want to see. Or use the tour in the RS guidebook, but just go to the parts of the museum that interest you and your sons. Also, look beyond that Louvre is a museum. It is a former palace so note the architecture and decor.

You need to get into the Louvre early, before 10, because the lines for security back up. I enter at 9, the opening time.

Here are two ways to visit offered by the Louvre:
You have "Welcome to the Louvre" guided tour of the highlights in English at 11 everyday. Otherwise, you could try going in the evening on Wednesdays or Fridays and take this tour at 7 pm. There are still security lines, but shorter. These tours fill up fast.

Otherwise, you can have a very effective self-tour following the The Louvre's Masterpieces Visitor Trail. It's only twelve works, but the really good part is that you can read all about what you are going to see in advance, so when you look at the Masterpiece, you understand it right away. This seems to be very effective.
Have a good visit.

I second slbdaisy’s recommendation to arrange your timed entry tickets and the use Rick’s audio tour.
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/audio-tours/paris
My husband and I did this and have commented several times since on how this was the perfect introduction to what can be an overwhelming museum. At just about an hour, it kept our attention and led us through the high points - delivered in Rick’s inimitable style! Obviously, you can stop and start it at your pleasure if you find you want to spend extra time in any one area.

For that matter, we have used Rick’s Audio app for many city walks/museums/churches. We always check it out when we visit somewhere new. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rick-steves-audio-europe/id414357125

I love the Louvre and do what Elizabeth does...I get there 1st thing in the AM. The lines are for the security to get into the building.

Is there anything in particular you would like to see? This link gets you to the maps of the Louvre. One is the paper map you can pick up at the kiosk after you enter the Louvre, the other is interactive.

https://www.louvre.fr/en/visit/map-entrances-directions#museum-map

IF you have people pick out some things ahead of time it's fairly easy to figure out a route if you don't want to use one of the routes on the Louvre website or to use Rick's route.

If you don't particularly care about the Mona Lisa, you can avoid the worst crowds. Code of Hammurabi? Rembrandt and Vermeer? Greek or Egyptian antiquities? There are actually some Impressionist paintings in one gallery (2nd floor of the Sully wing). The "NIKE" - Winged Victory of Samothrace?

My limit is about 2.5-3 hours in the Louvre, then I get into overload. It's crowded in some areas, it's hot and the amount of treasures is amazing.

Many, many thanks for all of these valuable replies! The day we'd like to go still has 9:30 reservations available so I think I will try that. We have used the RS audio tours very successfully in Italy - they are the perfect length for teenage attention span and I like that we can turn them on and off as necessary. I had considered skipping it altogether b/c my husband and I have been but my sons actually said they'd like to go and I am certainly not going to dissuade the curiousity. I will try to spend a little time familiarizing myself with what to see and make a plan but otherwise we'll rely on Rick's audio tour. I'm just glad to hear it's manageable without a tour (we're going next month so I need to get on this!).

10am is the earliest I can get for the day we want to do the Louvre, but we could go in the evening (it's a Friday) as well. Is 10 too late?

Dear Catherine, the Louvre will be a great opportunity for your teens to experience. A way to encourage their curiosity and engagement in the museum is to create a "scavenger hunt" of top highlights for them to find and learn about. I made one for my teen daughter for her trip to Paris(one for Louvre , one for Rodin) and other parts of France. Using images and the Louvre museum website to identify where to find the particular piece of art. Then we got a photo selfie for each piece of art. She loved finding each and kept her interested. Let me know if you want more details.
-Lynn

Unless you've ever been there, it is hard to fully convey the sheer immensity of the Louvre. It is really an entity unto itself, and if you decide to go, just be ready to accept that this is your activity for most of the day. There is really no "efficient" way to pull it off, trust me on this.

I can't even imagine doing a guided tour, TBH. If you really want to go, find out if you can get early entry tix without a guided tour, but you'll do best just seeing it at your own pace, especially with active teens in tow.

Standing and walking on hard marble floors is a lot more tiring than you might think, and after a while you get the the point where you can't even process what you're seeing any more. It is just ANOTHER gallery of paintings, ANOTHER room full of sculptures or Grecian urns that all look the same after a while. Honestly, I can't imagine this holding the interest of most teenaged boys for very long. If you go, just be ready to cut your losses and leave when the boys get tired of it. (And don't be surprised if you even beat them to it!)

Ten years ago when our boys were teenagers we visited the Louvre in the evening. Of course everything about everything has changed in 10 years, but somehow it felt less crowded; people seemed less aggressive. During the day everyone is hitting the ground running. By evening people seemed more relaxed and subdued. We saw what we wanted to see and didn't feel guilty about leaving when we left. I think if we'd gone during they day, we'd have felt more compelled to stay longer than we did. We definitely covered all the highlights that we had planned to see.

I did a chatgpt of the best things to see in the louvre in 2 hours. Then I asked it the order to see. It gave the floors numbers too. Then I asked the best way to get from one wing to the other. I now have my little 2 hour roadmap.

Rick's Tour of the Louve in the France book is 2-3 hours of "the things you really want to see" with good directions.

Did this last week - was enough for us but your results may vary!

@Lulu....let us know how the ChatGPT suggested tour works out! (I don't think you've gone yet??)

I hope you have a great visit! My daughter wrote down which works she really wanted to see, but in the end, we went 5 times, for 20 hours total (including a 9 hr day) but that is not what most people want to do. She just has really high art stamina. And for whatever reason or reasons, even when we were on the right floor, we still had a hard time finding some things and sometimes when someone who worked at the Louvre would tell us where something was, we still couldn't find it right away! It seemed rather maze-like, at times. So we got turned around quite a bit, but every room has great things in it. We first went on Wednesday evening when they were open late, and then Thurs all day, Fri morning, Mon afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon with a guide but that felt like going through the washing machine spin cycle, it was so fast! If there are some works you really really want to see, please check their website to see if that gallery or room is open on that day of the week.

I've been to the Louvre multiple times. Always (except once -- see below) entering through the entrance from rue du Rivoli rather than at the pyramid. It's always been an enjoyable visit and a relatively short wait to enter.

The one time I had a guide, it was part of a larger tour. We entered at the pyramid. It was my least favorite visit to the museum of all. The guide added nothing. In fact, he subtracted from the visit.

Unless you have a particular arcane focus on a specific artist or style of art, I have to say I can't imagine why anyone would bother with a guide to visit the Louvre.