Louvre Tours – With Expert Louvre Tour Guide
Are you looking for a Louvre tour with a true expert Louvre tour guide? You are in the right place. We offer a wide range of Louvre tours in English, from first-timer Louvre highlights tours to multiple themed tours for art lovers, from two-hour tours to full-day custom-made tours. Prices start at 179 € for a two-hour tour for two people without Louvre tickets.
Louvre pyramid and south facade at twilight, Paris, France.
New and Amazing! Till the end of 2025, the Louvre is testing an Entrance Reserved for Licensed Tour Guides with their Small Group of Customers (6 Maximum).
You can access this true skip-the-line privilege via our Louvre Private tours. This should continue until the end of 2025, but there is no guarantee. This is only a test, and the Louvre can decide to stop it at any time.
The Louvre Tours in a Nutshell
- Louvre guided tours in English (also possible in Spanish or French)
- Genuine private tours = your party only (up to 6 persons)
- Expert Louvre Tour Guide
- Exclusive Tours all curated by your guide
- Online booking and payment
- Available all year long (subject to availability)
2-hour Tour
- 1-2 people: 179 €
- 3 people: 219 €
- 4 people: 259 €
- 5 people: 299 €
- 6 people: 339 €
3-hour Tour
1-2 people: 235 €
3 people: 280 €
4 people: 325 €
5 people: 370 €
6 people: 415 €
4-hour Tour
- 1-2 people: 275 €
- 3 people: 325 €
- 4 people: 375 €
- 5 people: 425 €
- 6 people: 475 €
The Four Most popular Louvre Tours
(1) The Highlights / Discovery Tour is designed for those who come to the Louvre for the first time and want to discover the museum and its most iconic artifacts in +/- 2h.
(2) The Louvre Alternative Tour (also called the Another Louvre Tour) is for those returning to the museum or wanting to discover another, more peaceful Louvre.
Louvre Highlights Tour (2h)
A comprehensive introduction to the Louvre architecture and history and a fantastic selection of its famous masterpieces: Venus de Milo, da Vinci, Raphael, David, Delacroix, etc.
Louvre Alternative Tour (2h)
Discover or more quiet Louvre off-the-Beaten-Track. A more peaceful tour in the lesser visited part of the Louvre to discover its hidden gems!
(3) The Extended Tour can be presented as the sum of the Discovery and Alternative Tours. It is available in a full 4-hour version and a shorter 3-hour version.
(4) The Louvre Tour in the evening (Wednesday or Friday) is for those who want to maximize their chances of seeing the Louvre in its best possible condition. If a Wednesday or Friday Evening Tour is compatible with your plans, do not hesitate to take it. This is the best Louvre tour in our opinion.
Louvre Tour Extended (3h or 4h)
A tour to discover hidden gems of the Louvre and a selection of its most famous masterpieces: Venus de Milo, Victory of Samothrace, paintings by da Vinci, etc. You will experience the two faces of the Louvre: the quiet one and the crowded one.
Louvre Evening Tour (2h)
On Wednesday and Friday Evening, the Louvre close at 9 p.m. An evening tour is the best solution to discover the most famous Louvre masterpieces in a quieter environment. If it is compatible with your planning, do not hesitate.
Tour Guide Resume & Reviews
Certified Guide
Expert in Art & History
Postgraduate
BA Magna Cum Laude
French, English, Spanish
Our Louvre Tour Guide Has Personally Curated all our Louvre Tours
A Tour de France of the Louvre
I booked the alternative tour for my partner and myself to have a different take on the Louvre. We met Yves at the entrance and he asked for our preferences and what we liked and adjusted the tour accordingly. We had a Tour de France with Yves, unforgettable, we walked 9km in 2 hours and got amazing insights into some of the most amazing art pieces, and no, not only the Mona Lisa. Yves advised us to do the Friday evening tour to avoid the crowds and I can only highly recommend that. We had a fantastic time!
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!!”
Louvre, daytime tour
The tour and Yves was really a wonderful experience. Made the crowded Louvre a pleasure and taught us a great deal about history and the art within. We had a mix of ages from 6 to 75 years, thus many different needs. Yves accommodated and supported the whole group while keeping his personable and educational approach. I wish we had known of Yves earlier in our trip, we would have used him in other areas of France. We will definitely rebook and recommend Yves highly for others.
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.”
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.
Louvre Themed Tours
Napoleon in the Louvre
Louis XIV, the Sun King, abandoned the Louvre for Versailles (1682).
Napoléon restarted the Louvre project, and Napoléon III, his nephew, finished it.
The Bonaparte family is still very present in the Louvre, from architecture to artifacts, sculptures, and paintings.
Napoleon in the Louvre
At its beginning, the Louvre was called "Musée Napoléon", and the links between the French Emperor and the Famous Museum are strong—a tour reserved for the fans of the French imperial era.
Italian Renaissance Painting Tour
An in-depth look into the Italian Renaissance, from its origin in ancient Rome and Greek sculptures to its end with the beginning of the Baroque.
A tour with the most famous painters of the period: Giotto, Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello, Botticelli, Mantegna, Perugino, Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Caravaggio, Titian, Veronese, etc.
Italian Renaissance Painting Tour
The Louvre has an amazing Italian Renaissance collection which has been started long ago by the kings of France and first of all François I, the one who received Leonardo da Vinci at the end of his life.
A 3-hour Italian Painting Tour (from Cimabue to Tiepolo) from the 13th to 18th centuries is coming soon.
French Painting Tour Set
Why follow French painting tours in the Louvre? Although the Louvre is world-famous for housing the Mona Lisa, it is also the largest museum in the world, with a massive collection of French paintings.
Moreover, as most French painting rooms are not part of the Louvre’s classical tourist route, you will also probably discover and appreciate a quieter and less crowded Louvre Museum.
The Louvre is the best place to learn about French canvases. We proposed a series of dedicated tours.
Louvre French Painting 17th Century
The French call the 17th century “Le Grand Siècle” (the great century), the one of Louis XIV the Sun-king, the one of the creations of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, when France started to dominate arts for over 250 years.
Louvre French Painting 18th Century
18th-century French painting with Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard, Greuze, Vigée 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 the 14th to the 19th Century
A three-hour 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 Rococo to Neoclassicism
- 19th C. The Age of Romanticism
Crash Course French Painting
Crash Course. French Painting from 14th-century beginning to 19th-century Romanticism. Five hundred years of art history in +/- 3h.
Combo With Orsay Museum and Orangerie Museum
The Louvre collection stops at the mid-19th Century; if you want to continue your discovery of French paintings after 1850, you just have to cross the Seine River from the Louvre Gardens (Jardin des Tuileries) to reach the Musée d’Orsay.
D’Orsay is the best place in the world to learn about the French Art Révolution of the second half of the 19th century, including the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Cassatt, Pissarro, Cézanne, Toulouse Lautrec, Signac, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. See our Orsay Museum Private Tour.
You can even continue your art Journey further away with the Orangerie Museum, which has two famous immersive rooms exclusively dedicated to Monet’s Water Lilies. The Orangerie also houses the prestigious Walter & Guillaume painting collection, which includes works by Soutine, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Douanier Rousseau, Utrillo, Renoir, etc. See our Orangerie Museum Private Tour.
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
Understand the development of painting in Flanders, from Flemish Primitives 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 tour from Flemish Primitive to 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, Brueghel, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc.
- Ancient Egypt Louvre Tour
The Louvre Museum houses one of the world’s most important ancient Egyptian collections. France’s first contact with ancient Egypt began with the young Bonaparte’s 1798 expedition to Egypt, which marked the inception of modern Egyptology.
Another Frenchman, Champollion, discovered a little later the secret of the translation of ancient Egyptian writing: the Hieroglyphs. Champollion was the first Curator of the Louvre’s Ancient Egypt Department.
Stele with hieroglyphs. The Ancient Egypt hieroglyphs writing system was deciphered by Champollion.
Louvre Special Tours
Full-Day Louvre Tour
Full-day Louvre tours are possible. Tour guide only for you, +/- 7 hours of visit + a mid-day lunch pause of +/- 1.5 hours inside the Louvre (food and beverage not included). Contact us.
Louvre Custom Made-Tour
Special subjects, artists, or eras requests are welcome: contact us.
Full Day Combo Historical hearth of Paris + Louvre Tour
With this combo tour, you can discover the historical heart of Paris and the Louvre on the same day. These “full-day” tours (+/-7 hours duration) are only for those who are really tour fans and are not afraid to walk all day long.
There are two versions of the tour.
One shows you the Quartier Latin and Île de la Cité area, then there is a standard (daytime) Louvre Tour, and then the tour continues to the Tuileries Garden, Place Vendôme, and Place de la Concorde.
The other includes Quartier Latin, Île de la Cité, and le Marais, ending with a Louvre Evening Tour, knowing that in the evening, the Louvre is usually less crowded than in the daytime.
Paris Private Tour the Essentials All day with Louvre Tour Included
Really private tour
Postgraduate (MPhil) fully licensed guide
Paris - The Essentials All day with Louvre Evening Tour included
Really private tour
Postgraduate (MPhil) fully licensed guide
Louvre Tours in Preparation
Art of Islam
In one of the quietest parts of the Louvre, under the Cour Visconti. There is the “Baptistère de Saint Louis,” a 14th-century Islamic art jewel, a hammered brass basin that was used as a baptismal font for future French Kings.
Near Eastern Antiquities
On May 1st, 1847, officials inaugurated the world’s first Assyrian Museum in the Louvre. Nowadays, the Near Eastern Antiquities Departmentcovers three areas: Mesopotamia, Persia, and the Levant(Cyprus, Lucia, Lydia, Cilicia, and Phoenicia).
The department is full of amazing artifacts: The department is full of amazing artifacts: ʿThe Statue of Ebih-Il (2400 BC), the Superintendent of Mari’s ancient city-state. The Code of Hammurabi (1792 – 1750 BC); The Cour Khorsabad (Circa 700 BC) with the Lamassu of the palace of Assyrian king Sargon II; Frieze of Archers of Darius’s Palace (550 – 486 BC); Passing Lion (Babylon, reign of Nebuchadrezzar II, 605 BC–562 BC), etc.
History of Sculpture Through the Ages
From ʿAin Ghazal Statue (Circa 7000 BC) to 19th-century Romanticism.
Rubens, the Master of Flemish Baroque, and Marie de’ Medicis’ friend
Rubens, from the Romanist painter to the preeminent Baroque leader. His friends and collaborators included Van Dick, Jan Brueghel, etc. The tour will focus on Rubens’s principal masterpieces at the Louvre, his 24 paintings for the Marie de’ Medici Cycle.
The Louvre and the Bible.
From Ancient Mesopotamia to Baroque painting …. soon!
The Louvre Museum.
Clarifications Skip-the-Line-Tickets – When to Come to the Louvre to Make the Most of Your Stay
Skip-the-Line Tickets Are a Marketing Concept; They are Just Standard Online Timed Tickets
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 at 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 a ticket.
See our specific page explaining in detail what you get with “the skip the line tickets,” what is the best moment to visit the Louvre to avoid the crowd, and the two ways to get real skip-the-line privilege access to the Louvre.
Whatever, there is more than one entry gate in the Louvre, if you take a Broaden-horizons.fr Louvre tour, your guide will help you optimize the situation.
FAQS – More about the Louvre
How Long Does It Take to Visit the Louvre?
The Louvre is enormous; you would need weeks to see everything.
If you are an art lover, planning a full day there makes a lot of sense.
The tour also helps you understand how the museum is organized and find your bearings there.
What Are The Rules to Follow in The Louvre?
A dedicated Louvre website page describes all the museum’s rules.
Is It Possible to Go Outside and Come Back with the Same Louvre Ticket?
No, any exit from the Louvre is final.
Is it Possible to Spend All Day in The Louvre & Eat There?
Yes, at the Pyramid Area (Goguette, Comptoir du Louvre, Starbucks, and two takeaway counters) or even in some galleries at café Mollien and café Angelina.
Is it Possible to Have a Guide for the All Day?
Yes, you can book a half-day or even a full-day private tour.
Accessibility / Wheelchair
The Louvre has excellent accessibility. People in wheelchairs are welcome on our Louvre tours, but please always contact us before booking. Some themed tours may be difficult (or even impossible) to organize. Whatever tour we speak about, the itinerary and content will be different from the usual ones because of the constraints of the elevators. Sometimes, problems may occur (elevator out of order). Your guide will define a step-free, wheelchair-friendly itinerary on the go throughout the museum.