Louvre Museum Tickets

There's a large variety of Louvre tickets to choose from, with different costs attached. A basic e-ticket for the Louvre will only set you back around €17 – a steal for the amount of incredible artwork that's inside.

There's so much to see that you might want to take a guided tour with a group to hit all the highlights, and that will cost you between €50 and €70. If you really want to make the most of your time in the Louvre, a private tour of the museum with an expert guide is available.

Can you go to the Louvre without seeing the Mona Lisa? It would be like visiting Amsterdam without going on a canal boat, or visiting Pisa without taking hilarious photos.

But it's a fair question – is the Mona Lisa worth it? It's the most famous portrait ever painted, but the reality is that this 77 x 53 cm painting draws a gaggle of selfie-stick-wielding monsters. There are couples craning their necks, peering through the smallest gaps in the throng to catch a glimpse of Lisa Gherardini's timeless pose.

Yes, the security line to get within 15 feet of the painting is a chore. Yes, it will at times feel like a mosh pit as you bounce from shoulder to shoulder towards the back of the queue. But there's something about a fleeting audience with the Mona Lisa that makes you feel part of a very special club. It's a bucket-list exercise that you'll smugly complain about for the rest of your life.

There's so much to see at the Louvre, we wrote a blog about it. If you want the basic itinerary to make the most of your Louvre tickets, we've got you covered below.

• There's the Mona Lisa, obviously.

• Stand in front of Venus de Milo, the 2,000-year-old sculpture of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It's one of the most famous statues in the world!

• Don't miss Winged Victory of Samothrace, the now headless celebration of a Greek military victory that takes pride of place at the top of one of the Louvre's many grand staircases.

• You can't visit the Louvre without gazing up at the ceiling of Galerie d’Apollon, the gold-lined corridor home to the French crown jewels.

• Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix is the artistic representation of the second French Revolution, a powerful image of liberty in human form leading her people to victory.

If you want to see everything and really soak up the atmosphere in the Louvre, you'll need a good amount of time. We recommend you devote at least three hours to your experience to see the most of your Louvre tickets. Got some spare time? You could easily spend all day at the Louvre. Why not take a Louvre guided tour and then explore on your own!

It wasn't always home to artistic treasures. The Louvre was built in the 12th century as a fortress, and has been remodeled and built around countless times by various kings and emperors over the last 800 years. Glass pyramids weren't a thing in medieval times, of course. This iconic addition was only constructed in 1989.