Yves Louvre & Paris Private Tour Guide
More Information about Yves private tour guide. Art and History enthusiast, Louvre Museum specialist. Works mainly in Paris and Orléans Loire Valley. Also, all you need to know about tourist guide certifications in France and related subjects.
About Yves
Before Being a Guide
After graduating with his Masters‘s in Applied Economics and Information Systems at Paris Dauphine-PSL University, Yves traveled the world and developed an IT career in different European countries and International corporate organizations. He lived five years in Spain between Madrid and Barcelona and can speak French, English, and Spanish as a bit of German and Catalan.
A Passion for Arts & History
Yves’s passion for arts and history came from childhood; one of his grandmothers was a painter, while the other was a history teacher.
Arriving in his 40th, Yves’s interest in art and history gradually became more and more pregnant, and he finally decided to share his passion by becoming a guide. He studied both history and art history at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in Bordeaux, graduating with a BA in Heritage Developpement & Preservation with a Magna Cum Laude distinction, and is now a French national certified guide (Guide-conférencier). Yves also holds a special regional Ville d’Art et Histoire certificate from the Centre Loire Valley region.
Yves has lived in Paris for more than two decades, and he is always delighted to show his most beloved city to newcomers and those who desire to improve their knowledge of the city of lights.
Yves is a member of the FNGIC and Guid’z guides associations, Paris Historique association and Napoleonic American Society.
Yves’s Last trainings
- Luxembourg Garden (Jardin du Luxembourg): Garden of Marie de Medicis’s Palace, nowadays, the French Senat – Organized by Guid’z
- North Marais: Exploring the 16th to 18th century famous Paris le Marais mansions – Organized by Guid’z
- Versailles: The famous palace from Louis XIV to the of 19th century – Organized by Guid’z
- Mineralogy Museum – Mines Paris – PSL: The use of mineral pigments for painting – Organized by Guid’z
- The Louvre: Ancient Greece sculptures – Organized by Guid’z
- The Malmaison: The Mansion of the young Bonaparte, the one of his ex-wife Empress Josephine – Organized by Guid’z.
Low season 2021-2022.
- The Louvre: Italian Renaissance – Organized by Guid’z
- Invalides Musée de L’Armée – Organized by Guid’z
- Musée Carnavalet: (historical museum of Paris) – Organized by Guid’z
- The Louvre: Dutch and Flemish paintings – Organized by Guid’z
Jadins du Palais du Luxembourg. Photo © Broaden Horizons.
Some Yves’s Reviews
Exploring the arc of art history at the Louvre
We took the evening Louvre tour with Yves and it was one of the highlights of our time in Paris. The Louvre can be overwhelming, so if your goal is to go and take a selfie with the Mona Lisa and call it good, that’s fine. I had been there before and wanted something more than just the standard audio tour. My wife and I were looking for a more unique experience with more depth exposing us to more about the works, the history of the museum, and the larger arc of art history as a whole, and that’s what we got from our tour with Yves! His selection of works to highlight during the tour was well chosen to get at that arc of art history to help the interested laypeople like us. Yves brought a ton of energy and knowledge that really drove the tour and got us involved from start to finish. As the tour went on, he was adapting some of the focus points to the topics/lines of questioning that we were focusing on throughout, providing a very personal feel to the end product of the tour. I have a technical mindset as well as an interest in history, and he picked up on that from my questions and deftly weaved elements of that into the tour as we progressed. It was obvious that he is guiding tours due to his passion for the subject matter. As a history enthusiast, I also really appreciated how he was very thorough in pointing out what he knew (and could back up with research) versus where there was some speculation in the historical consensus. As a private tour, I doubt there are any as affordable with this high of a product and I would highly recommend Yves as a guide for anyone looking for compelling depth and energy in a private tour.
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!!”
Paris historical tour
Fascinating, educational and fun tour in Paris. Private guide who was passionate and knowledgeable and tailored the tour specifically for me.
Great Historic Tour with Relatable and Fun Guide
Yves curated a private tour of Napoleonic history for my history buff spouse and myself. We had such a great time walking around learning about Napoleon I and Napoleon III and the impact they had on the city of Paris. I am a history buff but not nearly as knowledgeable about Napoleon as my spouse, and Yves was able to both jump into deep dives for my spouse as well as explaining things high level for me. We will be back for other tours – what a fantastic experience!
Joan of Arc/ Orleans
What can I say about Yves? He is the absolute best. He is very considerate of his audience and he genuinely wants you to have a great experience. He went above and beyond for our tour.
He answered all of our questions (even the ones we thought weren’t a big deal turned out to be very informative). Yves also did a great job of weaving the history and importance of Orleans into this tour. I feel like we could’ve hung out with him all day. We can’t wait to visit Orleans again! Highly, highly recommended.
Yves is a wonderful guide!
I booked a tour with Broaden Horizons and had Yves as my guide. Since nobody else booked a tour that day, I was lucky to have Yves to myself. He was not only very well informed and interesting, he went out of his way to give me as much information as possible based on my personal curiosity. In other words, an almost tailor made tour! Chapeau to Broaden Horizons for having such a wonderful guide
More about Tour Guide in France & in Paris
Why Hire a Private Tour Guide? Do You Need One to Visit Paris?
Well, yes and no, it depends on what you want.
- For a first overview of Paris and a familiarisation with its layout, hop-on-hop-off buses are undeniably helpful! They’ll take you directly to all the postcard spots.
- The Parisian metro, one of the oldest in the world, is known for its exceptional density within the capital’s territorial limits. The metro can take you to every corner of the city.
So, in both cases, no tour guide is needed.
Now, to understand the great history of Paris linked with so many amazing historical facts, you need a tourist guide, and you have to choose to take a group tour or hire a private guide.
Group tour means a nonflexible tour in terms of schedule, route, and content, with a highly reduced possibility to ask questions with a tourist guide not available for you but for all the group.
A private tour guide means the opposite service. YOUR tour guide will only be available for YOU, as a couple, with friends, or as a family, to give YOU maximum satisfaction during your tour!
Why not follow a Free tour? There is a Tourist Guide Too There
Free tours are not so free. They are group tours in which the “guide,” apart from delivering low-quality or inappropriate content, will spend a big part of his energy trying to persuade his guests that they have to tip him at the end of the tour as he can’t work for nothing…
Only authorized persons can speak in public in the French national museum like the Louvre or Orsay. So, hiring a non-official guide there is a terrible idea.
Why hire a certified official guide
In France, official tourist guides are called Guide-conférencier (guide lecturers).
To get this title/diploma, you must follow a specialized Bachelor’s training in arts, history, architecture, public speaking group management, etc., and demonstrate your capacity to speak at least one foreign language at C1 level (Advanced).
If you hire somebody else, you may be lucky and deal with a talented non-graduate multilingual fellow, but it will probably be different.
Only authorized persons can speak publicly in the French national museum like the Louvre or Orsay. So, hiring a non-official guide there is a terrible idea.
How to Recognize an official guide, The Professional License Card
In France, the certified official tourist guides (Guide-conférenciers) received a special official card from the French Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
This card proves that a guide has graduated from the specific training to be a tourist guide in France.
In French national museums like Louvre or Orsay, the tourist guides must wear their license card around their neck during guided tours. If a “guide” does not wear his license card, it is not a good signal; if you doubt his competency, do not hesitate to ask your guide to show his card, it must look like the image below.
Qualities required to be a Paris Private Tour Guide
- In-depth knowledge of his tour field: Paris is massive in size and history. The guide should have personally curated the content of the tour he is doing.
- Curious and proactive: Exploring new subjects and zones is essential for a guide to remain at the top and not transform himself into a repeating machine
- Permanent training: with membership in one or more of the French guides associations (FNGIC, Guid’z, Ancovart, etc.)
- Foreign languages: An Obvious need quality when working with foreigners. You never stop to learn a language; such skills also require permanent training.
- Good Memory: An essential quality for a tour guide, memorizing tour data is much more on working and reworking it than rehearsing it.
- Humor/fun: Memorizing a lot of data is not all; they must be conveyed without boring the public; humor and fun are essential for a successful tour.
- Passion: it is a communicative quality as essential as humor and fun for a successful tour
- Adaptive and sensitive to customers’ diversity and knowledge. Passion has to be controlled. A guide has to know how to adapt his speech to the public.
Punctual, Organized, and Responsive: The last skill of the list, as it envelops all the others. Whatever the qualities of a guide, the tour or even the all-day may become a mess if the tourist guide is late or does not control his tour route.
Guess do not have to wait or check around for a tour guide; everything should run smoothly during the tour.