Louvre Private Tours
A great Louvre private tours offer from first-timer Louvre discovery tour to thematic fine arts series. From 2-hour tour to full-day custom-made tour. All our Louvre guided tours are done by a postgraduate licensed louvre tour guide.
Louvre pyramid and south facade at twilight, Paris, France.
Our Louvre Private Tours in a Nutshell
- Guided tours in English
- Genuine private tour = your party only (up to 6 persons)
- Postgraduate (MPhil) certified French national guide
- Reservation & payment via an easy online process
- Available all year long (subject to availability) as private tours
- Museum Skip-the-line tickets are extra (17 € per adult)
Prices start for 2-hour private tours (museum ticket not included) at:
- 130 € for 1 or 2 people
- 145 € for 3 people
- 170 € for 4 people
- 195 € for 5 people
- 220 € for 6 people
During the high season, we may offer semi-private tours at a lower rate.
Your Louvre Private Tour Guide
Certified French National Guide
Expert in Art & History
Postgraduate, BA Magna Cum Laude
Has curated all our Louvre Tours
French (native), English, Spanish
Louvre Private Tour Reviews
Fun at the Louvre
“If you really want to enjoy an art museum and do a deep dive into art history you must take a tour at the Louvre with Yves. I don’t remember a tour that was so much fun and informative.”
The highlight of our trip!!
“This was the best investment and hands down the highlight of our trip!! We booked a tour of the Louvre with Yves. The Louvre is huge and there is so much to see. In two hours, Yves managed to show us an incredible amount. He is deeply knowledgeable about art history, and it was amazingly helpful to have him contextualize what we were seeing for us. We are already planning to book with him again the next time we are in Paris. Don’t hesitate—this is an experience that is worth every penny!!”
Exciting visit to the Louvre
Fascinating visit of the Louvre, with this guide who is passionate about his subject. He doesn’t know everything, and at least he says so. For the rest, it overflows with fascinating anecdotes and knows how to captivate its audience with an erudition that is never heavy. Time passes without seeing him, and he too overflows. An experience to repeat.
Best Choice of our guide: Louvre Evening Tour on Fridays!
Enlarge your stay in the museum enjoying late evening less crowded hours on Fridays as the Louvre is open till 9.45 PM.
An evening tour is more than recommendable to follow our two tours having their route in the more crowded Louvre Gallery “the Louvre discovery classic tour” and the “Italian painting tour”, nevertheless, all our Louvre tour may be booked as private evening tour is open on Friday. Just book the corresponding schedule in the availability calendar of the tour you are interested in!
Our Louvre Private evening tour page details all the advantages of an evening tour.
Louvre in the evening in wintertime. Louvre evening tours are possible on Friday as the Louvre closes at 9:45 PM.
More info about our Louvre Private Tours
Clarifications
Skip-the-line tickets
Certified French National Guide
Private Tour
Semi-private Tour
How to get a real skip-the-line priviledge
When to Come to the Louvre to Make the Most of Your stay
Chose the Best Period of the Year
Avoid the summer high season.
Avoid Bastille Day (July 14th) as the Louvre is free for all.
Chose the Best Days of the Week
Avoid weekends.
As Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, more people may come on Wednesdays.
On Mondays as Orsay Museum is closed, more people may come to the Louvre.
Check if There is no Planned Closure of a Department You Want to See the Day You Want to Come
Some galleries close on specific days of the week, check the Louvre rooms closure schedule.
Chose the Best Hours for a Louvre Tour
Early morning at 9 AM when the Louvre opens its doors may be a good choice: shorter security lines and galleries still relatively quiet.
But If you only want to spend only a pair of hours in the Louvre, Friday after 6 PM, is a must, you will normally enjoy very quiet galleries.
Visit the Most Popular Galleries at Quiet Hours Only
The most popular galleries are the one of the 2-hour Louvre classical discovery tour: Italian Renaissance Gallery (Mona Lisa), 19th century big French paintings (coronation of Napoleon, Raft of the Medusa, Liberty Guiding People), Ancient Greece and Rome sculptures (Venus de Milo, Nike of Samotrace) and Apollo Gallery (French crone’s Jewels). So avoid these galleries at pick hours, and better book a Louvre 2-hour classical discovery during low season or after 6 PM (Friday only).
Check Louvre Visits Data by Yourself
Check real time (live) visit data on affluence website.
Google “Louvre” and check the Google Louvre’s Business Profile: the “Popular Time” section shows statistics of visits per day.
Our advice come to the Louvre in the Evening
On Friday Louvre is open till 9:45 PM after 6 PM galleries are usually quieter.
A Louvre Evening Private Tour is clearly the best solution to discover the most famous parts of the Louvre which are usually very crowded during the daytime.
Clarifications
Skip-the-Line Tickets Is a Marketing Concept, They Are Just Standard Online Ones
The Louvre website says, “All visitors, including those entitled to free admission (including Paris Museum Pass bearer), must book a time slot. Buy your ticket online on www.ticketlouvre.fr… During off-peak times, there may also be a limited number of time slots for same-day visits available for booking at the museum. However … to guarantee your entry … we strongly advise booking your time slot in advance online.” Conclusion no magic: During your time slot, you are entitled to enter the online booking security line, so yes, you skip the line… of those who come without ticket.
So, as there is more than one entry gate in the Louvre what you can expect from your guide is to help you to optimize the situation. In the case of the Certified French National guides, they have access for themselves to a privileged entry gate. Traditionally the Louvre let them share this privilege with their private clients but this is unofficial and uncertain. No warranty can be given about.
Certified French National Guide
For obvious reasons, it is a very bad idea to follow a Louvre tour with a non-official guide. Certified French National Guide has been specifically trained at minimum bachelor degree level and bear an official card delivered by the ministries of culture and tourism. Certified French National Guide shows their card passing any entry gate in the Louvre.
Private Tour Versus Semi-Private Tour
Private Tours: We are specialized in private tours. Our private tours are really private meaning that nobody else will be added to your tour, your tour is for you and your party only. You can book your private tour for a maximum of 6 people. Private tour is our normal way to work with our customers all year long. There is no planned date for our private tour, if we are available for the date you wish we will do the tour for you.
Semi-private tour: During the high season we may also offer some of our tours as semi-private tours. On the Louvre semi-private tours, you are with other people but in a very little group of 6 people maximum. When semi-private tours are available, the schedule is shown here.
How to get a real skip-the-line privilege
Become a member of the Société des Amis du Louvre
If you plan to come a few times to the Louvre and you want to have a real priviledged access to the museum the solution is to become a member of the Société des amis du Louvre this will give you during one year illimited access to the Louvre by the Porte Richelieu card holder entry (reserved for professionals and … Amis du Louvre). Different annual membership packages are availlable: single adulte 80 €, duo 120 €, under 26 only 15 €, etc.
Constraint: Amis du Louvre cards are send by mail to your adress from France so you better deal with that in advance.
All Our Louvre Private Tours
Louvre Tour for First-Timers
Louvre Discovery Tour (2h)
A comprehensive introduction to the Louvre architecture and history and most of all an amazing selection of masterpieces: da Vinci, Raphael, David, Delacroix, etc.
Louvre Discovery Tour Extended (4h)
A comprehensive introduction to the Louvre architecture and history and most of all an amazing selection of masterpieces: da Vinci, Raphael, David, Delacroix, etc.
Italian Paintings Tours
Also, coming soon, a 3 hours Italian Painting Tour from the 13th to 18th centuries, from Cimabue to Tiepolo.
French Painting Cycle
Why follow French paintings tours in the Louvre? Because if the Louvre is world-famous for housing the Mona Lisa, it is also the biggest Museum in the world, owning very logically a huge collection of French Paintings.
More, as most of the French paintings rooms are not part of the Louvre classical touristic route, you will also probably discover and appreciate a quieter and not so crowded Louvre Museum.
The Louvre is obviously the best place to learn about French canvases. We proposed a series of dedicated tours.
Louvre French Painting 17th Century
Louvre French Painting 18th Century
18th-century French painting with Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard, Greuze, Vigé Lebrun, David, Gerard, etc. Spend two amazing hours back in the century of enlightenment.
Louvre French Painting 19th Century
This 19th-century French Painting Louvre tour is the last one of our Louvre painting series. It is only dedicated to the first half of the 19th century, to discover the second half of this century you will have to change of museum and follow our Musée d’Orsay tour.
Crash Course French Painting From 14th to 19th Century
A three-hours tour in 5 parts to understand the evolution of French painting from the 14th to the 19th century.
- 14th & 15th C. International Gothic
- 16th C. French Renaissance – Italian & Flemish influence
- 17th C. Baroque versus Classicism
- 18th C. From Rocco to Neoclassic
- 19th C. The age of Romanticism
Crash Course French Painting
Crash Course French Painting from 14th-century beginning to 19th-century Romanticism.
Dutch and Flemish Painting
The Louvre owns the biggest collection of Flemish and Dutch paintings outside Belgium and the Netherlands. Our tour gives a chronological overview of the field with Van Eyck, Memling, Metsys, Patinier, Bruegel, Pourbus, Hals, Ruisdael, Vermeer, Rubens, Van Dick, Rembrandt, etc. Three versions of the tour are available.
Louvre Flemish Paintings Tour
An amazing Louvre tour to understand the development of painting in Flanders. From Flemish primitive with Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Memling, Bosch, Matsys, Pieter Brueghel, etc. to Flemish Baroque of Rubens, Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens and more.
Louvre Dutch Paintings Tour
Starting from its origin with humanism and reformation in Habsburg Netherlands, this Louvre painting focus in the 17th century Dutch Golden Age with Rembrandt, Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Gerrit Dou, Frans Hals, Van Ruisdael, Ludolf Backhuysen, Frans Post, etc.
Louvre Flemish & Dutch Paintings
A 3-hour crash course from 15th-century Primitive Flemishes to 17th-century Dutch Golden Age. More than 250 years of art evolution with the most famous painters of the northern schools: van Eyck, van der Weyden, Memling, Bosch, Matsys, Brueghel, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals etc.
Ancient Egypt Louvre Private Tour
The Louvre Museum houses one of the world’s most important ancient Egypt collection. France’s first contact with ancient Egypt started with the young Bonapart’s 1798 expedition to Egypt, this is when was invented egyptology. Another French man Champollion discovered a little later the secret of the translation of ancient Egypt writing: the Hieroglyph. Contact us.
Napoleon in the Louvre Private Tour
The Sun king is the one who abandoned the Louvre. Napoléon is the one who restart the Louvre project, is nephew the one who finished it up. From architecture to paintings the Bonapart family is still very present in the Louvre. Contact us.
Extended Louvre Private Tour
Half-day tour, full-day tour: contact us.
Louvre Custom Made Tour
Special subjects, artists, eras, requests are welcome: contact us.
Prepare Your Tour at the Louvre to Make the Most of it
Louvre Facts & Data
- More than 800 years of history (initially a medieval castle).
- Since then most of the French rulers participated in its construction.
- Artists worked and were housed there since the 15th century.
- 1682 Louis XIV abandoned the Louvre for Versailles
- Became a museum during French Revolution.
- 2260421 ft² built, among them 652293 ft² of galleries.
- More than 300 000 works of arts from which +/- 35 000 are exhibited.
- 7500 paintings, a little more than half of them are shown in the galleries.
- The Louvre houses a famous fine arts school: l‘École du Louvre.
- Also housed there is the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France which owns a particle accelerator to study art works.
- The Louvre is the world biggest, most famous and most visited museum.
- Louvre pyramid complex designed by architect I.M.Pei in the 80s to manage the flow of tourists, is now undersized.
Related French Rulers Timeline
- Philip II (Philip Augustus): The first Louvre, a medieval fortress, was build under is reign around 1190.
- Louis IX (Saint Louis): Great son of Philip II he continued the work on the fortress. The “Sainte-Chapelle” was built (1241 to 1248) under is reign.
- Charles V (1364 to 1380): transformed the fortress in a gothic palace.
- François I iconic king of the French Renaissance starts the royal collection acquiring works from italian masters as Raphael or Michelangelo and briging others, as Leonardo da Vinci, to his court.
- Henri II: Carried out from 1547 is father François I project, the Renaissance Louvre.
- Henri IV: The Grand Gallery was built under the reign of the first Boubon King.
- Louis XIV: The Sun king initially involved himself in the Louvre layout but finally leave it for is new built Versaille Palace.
- Napoleon Bonaparte restarted the Louvre building the Rivoli Street wing.
- Napoleon III: finalised the project with numerous constructions.
- François Mitterand: In the 80’s the French president asked architect I.M.Pei to implemente his pyramid in the Louvre main courtyard.
Online Collections & Ressources
Amenities
WIFI: Some free hotspots are spread in the museum. No full coverage.
Children: Are welcome in the Louvre but have no really dedicated area for them despite since the end of 2021 a new space Le studio may partially play this role.
Snack and Lunch Break Inside the Louvre:
- At the Pyramid reception area (Goguette, Comptoir du Louvre, Starbuck, and two take away counters).
- In the galleries: café Mollien in Denon wing and café Angelina in Richelieu wing with terraces overlooking the Louvre Pyramid