Louvre Museum with Audio Guide

Luckily, we bought skip the line tickets online. We arrived at 10:30 with 12:00 reservation. The no ticket holder line was already 100 meters long; no one in the reserved line. They allowed us to enter early which was great. Inside, we spent first 40 minutes negotiating the crowd, renting an audio guide and finding some art. Mona Lisa is on a special display and the line was over 200 meters when we got there, so skipped that. When we left 5 hrs later, line was at least twice as long.😡 The audio guide is OK, but not great. There are only audio descriptions for “significant” works. English translation: about one in 50. The crowd is unbearable...RUDE! This was a Sunday morning in October. Certainly no time available on our schedule to study a work, but you could barely see a work without people crashing into you, jumping in front to get a selfie and quite a few were trying to run and photograph every work - as if they would ever look at the pics again. While we were able to view many incredible works, the crowd ruined the Louvre for us. Hate to see it when it is really crowded in the peak season.

We arrived at the Louvre right before it opened on September 26. There was a small line up which took less than 30 minutes to get through. Folks with Skip the Line tickets had hardly any wait. Once inside, there is a line up to see the Mona Lisa, however, you have to stand in another line to get an audio guide. The signage for the location of the audio guides were confusing as and poorly organized which caused even further line ups and waiting which takes away from your museum experience. When returning your audio guide, you must stand in the same line as to get one. This could be better streamlined in my opinion. Or have more than two people distributing audio guides. Having said all that, because we were there early, we had a minimal wait in line for both the audio guide and the Mona Lisa line. The Mona Lisa was disappointing as we were shuttled through like cattle going to slaughter, stood 15 feet away from it for less than a minute, then staff had to start herding the throngs of people out. There are many more stunning works of art at the Louvre that you can enjoy at your leisure that will make this an enjoyable experience.

To avoid ticket lines, get the museum pass. If you have a museum pass, remember to get a time reservation, you would have to be in the general line if you don't get a reservation. The bar code on the museum pass is needed to make the reservation. There is a 1-2hr line to see Mona Lisa. The line shorter as we were leaving. Audio guide is good, if you have someone in your group who can go stand in the Audio line as you stand in the Mona Lisa line do that, they take you ID to give you the audio guide. To take good picture without a thousand people in the background, go to the back of the pyramids early in the morning. Museum staff is very helpful, make a list of what you want to see, mark them out on the map and ask for help.