Another Louvre Tour Review: The Louvre's Own €12 Guided Tour

The Louvre's official guided tours

Besides partner tours, the museum runs three regular guided tours of its own, sold on the official guided tours page. Each costs €12 (reduced rate €9) on top of an entry ticket.

Schedule last checked on the official ticket site on 26 October 2026. Times can change, especially during school holidays, so check the official calendar before you book.

Check the start time. The English "Welcome to the Louvre" tour usually starts at 11:00 or 14:00, the museum's busiest hours, so you won't see the Mona Lisa without a crowd. "Another Louvre" runs only on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. For us, a Saturday at 10:30 fitted perfectly.

Why we chose "Another Louvre"

We both know ancient Greek and Roman history well, so we didn't need a guide for the famous pieces. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo on our own after our 9:00 entry, then joined the 10:30 tour for the rooms most visitors skip. Here is how our 9 AM morning went.

How the tour works

We booked the tour on the official site together with our entry tickets, 39 days ahead. On the day, the steps are simple:

1. Go to the group reception area under the Pyramid. The ticket warns it can take up to 30 minutes to get there.
2. Collect your audio headset and leave your passport or ID card as a deposit.
3. Leave bags and coats in the free lockers nearby if you want to travel light.
4. Wait for your guide in one of the numbered meeting rooms.

Our group had about 20 people and the tour was in English. Our guide was qualified and friendly. The tour began with a short briefing in the room: we tested the headsets, tuned in to the right channel and got an overview of how the Louvre is laid out and where we would go.

The meeting point is outside the galleries. That was no problem: after the tour we went back through ticket control into another wing, and our guide confirmed this is allowed. Only leaving the building is final.

What you see on the "Another Louvre" tour

The tour covered more than we can show here. These are the stops that stayed with us, in the order we saw them.

The Cour Marly

The tour started in the Cour Marly (Room 102, Richelieu Wing, Level −1), a former courtyard under a glass roof. The French sculptures here were made for royal gardens and squares, and they still stand in daylight.

The first works that made us stop were Guillaume Coustou's rearing Marly Horses and, in the middle of our collage, Boreas Abducting Orithyia by Gaspard Marsy and Anselme Flamen.

The Cour Puget

Next door, the Cour Puget (Room 105, Richelieu Wing, Level −1) holds French sculpture from the 17th to the 19th century.

We started with Martin Desjardins' Four Captives (1679–1682). The four bronzes stand for defeated nations: Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg and Holland. They once decorated the royal monument on the Place des Victoires in Paris.

In the same courtyard stand Hannibal by Sébastien Slodtz and Julius Caesar by Nicolas Coustou. Both were made for the gardens of Versailles, moved to the Tuileries in 1722 and to the Louvre in 1872.

Artur's favourite in this courtyard was François-Joseph Bosio's bronze Hercules Fighting Achelous Transformed into a Snake (1824), 2.6 metres tall.

The snake is not the Hydra. It is Achelous, a river god who could change his shape, and the two fought over who would marry Deianira.

Hercules pins him down with one hand and raises the other to strike.

The Code of Hammurabi

From the sculpture courts we went up to the Near Eastern antiquities on Level 0.

The Code of Hammurabi (Room 227) is a 2.25-metre basalt stele from Babylon, almost 3,800 years old. It was found at Susa, in today's Iran.

Up close you can see every line of the cuneiform: 282 rulings on family, property, trade, work and crime.

The Cour Khorsabad

A few rooms on, the Cour Khorsabad (Room 229, Richelieu Wing, Level 0) is guarded by the winged bulls from our cover photo. These lamassu stood at the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin, today's Khorsabad in Iraq. They date from 721–705 BC and are more than four metres tall.

Look twice. Each bull has five legs, so it seems to stand still from the front and to walk from the side.

In the same courtyard is a hero holding a lion, often identified as Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. The figure is over five metres tall and, unusually for Assyrian art, faces you head-on.

Ebih-Il of Mari

The statue of Ebih-Il (Room 234, Richelieu Wing, Level 0) was made around 2400 BC. Ebih-Il was a high official in Mari, in today's Syria, and he sits with his hands joined in prayer. For Artur, this was one of the best finds of the day.

It's the eyes that hold you: lapis lazuli set in shell and outlined in black clay. After more than 4,400 years they still look alive. The inscription on his shoulder dedicates the statue to the goddess Ishtar.

The Cone of Urukagina

In the next room was something we hadn't expected: a text on reforms about 600 years older than the Code of Hammurabi.

The Cone of Urukagina (Room 236) dates from around 2350 BC. This 27-centimetre clay cone from Girsu, in ancient Sumer, records how Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, curbed abuses of power and unfair levies.

It is one of the earliest known texts on law and government.

A window over the Pyramid

We then went upstairs to the Dutch paintings to see Rembrandt. On the way we stopped at a window over the Cour Napoléon. After an hour indoors, it was good to see I. M. Pei's Pyramid from above.

Rembrandt, 27 years apart

In Room 844 (Richelieu Wing, Level 2), three of Rembrandt's self-portraits hang side by side. For Artur, this was one of the best moments of the tour.

Two date from 1633, when he was about 27: a confident young painter in a toque with a gold chain, and bareheaded. The third, from 1660, shows him at 54 in a plain cap at his easel.

In between, in 1656, he went bankrupt. Seeing the three together is like watching a life go by.

The same room holds his full-length portraits of a young Amsterdam couple, Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, painted in 1634.

France and the Netherlands bought the pair together in 2016. The two paintings must always hang side by side, moving between the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum, and they are in Paris until 2029. The tour ended at noon, 90 minutes after it began.

Pros and cons

Official tour or partner tour?

Two plans work. The difference is how you spend your morning.

Why it matters: for most visitors, two or three hours in the Louvre is enough. After that your brain switches off and you get tired, so there is little point in staying all day just to fit a tour in.

Compare 9:00 tickets and tours Partner guided tours Private tours

Is the official Louvre guided tour worth it?

It is a nice extra, not a must. "Another Louvre" suits people on their second or third visit who have already seen the Mona Lisa and the highlights, ideally on a tour, and who love art enough to want more. On a first visit, the famous rooms will mean more to you, so start with a highlights tour.

About the authors

Artur JakucewiczFounder, author and developer Jana JakucewiczUX and UI designer

Artur builds websites professionally and has written about travel for years. He created and develops Louvre Last Minute. Jana is a professional UX and UI designer. She designed Louvre Last Minute. We write only about visits we made ourselves, and we are big fans of ancient sculpture and the history of Greece and Rome. Read more about us.