Are you wondering if you should take a guided tour of the Louvre Museum when you visit Paris?

For a lot of visitors, the best and easiest way to explore the Louvre, view its iconic treasures such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and bypass the notoriously long security lines where wait time can be up four hours is to join a guided tour.  It can also be a lot more fun and informative than going on your own, especially when you're visiting for the first time.

Even if you've visited the Musée du Louvre (as it is called in French) on your own, seeing it through the eyes of an expert guide can provide new insights and a richer experience.

Even though the Louvre now limits daily admission to 30,000 visitors (down from 45,000/day pre-pandemic), that's still a lot of people crowding around the most popular exhibits.  Tours led by expert guides provide plenty of benefits to help you get the most from your visit.

Being part of a tour group means you get fast-track priority entrance into the museum, the expertise of someone who knows where the most famous masterpieces are located and how to whisk you quickly through the masses of other visitors to get to them, and insights and interesting stories about the art that make the whole experience fun and entertaining. 

As a bonus, most tours let you continue exploring on your own after the tour ends.

In this article, we provide tips on how to choose the best Louvre tours, how the skip-the-line process works, highlights of what you might see on a guided tour, and a few more things to see and do in the museum and nearby Paris locations after your official tour ends.