Louvre Museum Extended – Three hours

Louvre museum - Extended tour - 3 hours

In addition to the 2 hours classic tour, discover Ancient Egyt department, Napoléon III apartments and many other dazzling works!

The Louvre is the largest and most visited museum in the world. Enjoy a tour of the iconic masterpieces with a licensed guide: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, The Liberty Leading the People, The Coronation of Napoleon, Michelangelo statues!  Having your own experienced guide will save you incredible time. You will be able to explore the palace and the collections with a planned itinerary to make it manageable so you do not get the feeling you missed something you would not want to miss.

• Only you and your loved ones!
• Entrance fees are included in our price.
• Licensed tour guide: Elisa, Camilla or Noha
• Your guide will pre-purchase your tickets, so you will avoid the queue. Be prepared to a possible waiting at security screening.

Discovering the Louvre Museum on a private tour also means understanding the history of its collections. The Louvre essentially comes from the royal collections, which mainly included paintings. The two kings who worked the hardest to build up these collections are François 1er, who collected mostly Italian paintings such as the Mona Lisa, and Louis XIV, who made a large number of orders and various purchases. The Crown Jewels have been part of the museum since its creation, and a large number of sculptures come from the Museum of French Monuments or from seizures made during the French Revolution.

The Napoleonic Wars led to seizures all over Europe and most of them had to be returned after the collapsce of the French Empire of Napoléon. Many objects come from excavations carried out in Greece, the Middle East and Egypt. The Louvre also benefited from important legacies and donations made to the museum, and numerous purchases made throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Antiquity and the Renaissance are, however, the privileged periods, in particular because of the very numerous archaeological excavations throughout the 19th century, especially in the East. The most famous paintings, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, and the Beautiful Gardener by Raphaël had been acquired by François 1er. The Wedding at Cana was first seized by Napoleon's armies from the San Giorgio Maggiore convent in Venice, before being kept in exchange for a painting by Charles Le Brun. The Beggar by Murillo was acquired by Louis XVO, while the Lacemaker by Vermeer and the famous self-portrait with thistle by Dürer did not enter the museum until 1870 and 1908, respectively.

The two most emblematic statues of the museum are the Venus de Milo, discovered in 1820 and acquired the same year by the French ambassador to the Turkish government, and the Victory of Samothrace, discovered in pieces in 1863 on the eponymous island by Charles Champoiseau.

On this private tour, your guide will choose the best location to admire the masterpieces. She or he will take the time to make you discover what makes their beauty, their particularities, their history. And you will always be surprised to learn about these world famous masterpieces reproduced millions of times, elements that you wouldn't ever imagine.