Louvre Museum is the world's largest art museum and one of the most famous tourist spots in Paris. So it is not a surprise that it is also one of the most crowded museums attracting about 10.2 million visitors in 2018.
Read on to find out the best way to avoid the crowds during your visit to the Museum
You will need a bit of planning to bypass the long queues at the entrance and to enjoy the artworks with as little crowd as possible. Here are some tips that helped us to make the most of our visit.
1. Night at the Museum
Always check the official website for the opening hours. The Museum is closed on Tuesday and is open till 9:45 PM on Wednesdays and Fridays and 5:30 PM on other days. We decided to visit the Museum on Friday in the evening and that turned out to be a great decision. The crowd was relatively less compared to the morning/afternoon.
2. Entrance
The most popular way to enter the Louvre Museum is via the pyramid and it is also the most crowded. You will end up standing in the line for hours before you get a chance to enter the museum. Avoid this and enter via the other entrance near the Metro stop Palais-Royal Musée du Louvre. We did not wait in line and entered the museum within 5 minutes.
3. Buy tickets online
If you know what date and time you will be visiting the museum then it is best to buy tickets online. Tickets purchased online is €17 (€2 processing fee included). You can then skip the long lines at the museum entrance and enter through the shorter fast track line.
4. Don't plan to see the entire museum in one visit
The Louvre museum displays 35000 artworks and about 380000 objects. It is highly difficult to see the entire museum in one single visit. Hence plan to stay only for 4-5 hours during your first visit. This way you will not be tired and drained out for the rest of your stay in Paris. In 4 or 5 hours you can cover the important artworks (and skip the rest) or cover one of the wings (Denon, Sully, Richelieu).
The official website has all the information about the artworks displayed in each wing and you can plan in advance what to cover.
5. Visit Mona Lisa at the closing time
Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci is undoubtedly the most famous artwork in the Louvre Museum. But it is also a small painting and you can hardly see it because of the hundreds of people blocking your view. You can wait for 30-45 minutes to get your chance to go to the front of the painiting or you can come15 minutes before the closing time. Most of the people start to leave at that time and you will get the chance to admire the beautiful painting for a few seconds without a selfie stick hitting you in the face or a tall guy blocking your view completely.
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