If the British Museum sits at one end of the table, the
mighty Louvre gazes back from the other. French acquisitions spanning more than 1,000 years—including the stockpiles of such acquisitive types as Louis XIV and Napoleon—fill three sprawling, multi-story wings with some 300,000 
objets d’art. Any one of the Louvre’s sixteen topical sections (Renaissance Sculptures, Medieval Sculptures, Greek and Roman Sculptures, Oriental Antiquities, and Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and French painting—plus several more) would make a world-class museum in itself. Gathered into one site they form an exhaustive (and exhausting!) tour, little short of the history of human creativity.
The key to enjoying the Louvre is accepting that you will not see it all, at least not in one trip (or several). Then, decide what you want to see most and take time to savor it. There are, of course, many universally famed works here and you will repeatedly experience that odd mixture of recognition and vague disbelief—rather like meeting a famous person—that comes when you find yourself in front of such works as the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, or The Gleaners.One should, however, avoid the trap of spending the day in a mad rush to check off one "celebrity" after another. Instead, leave the selection to chance and come upon them unexpectedly (to the extent the crowds allow it) in the course of discovering unknown treasures for yourself: the towering, dramatic Melpom�ne; Poussin’s eerie Shepherds of Arcadia; the engaging ensembles of Jan Steen’s Dutch families, as human and humorous as your own. But come early: the Louvre is said to draw more visitors each day than any other attraction in Europe. They have a parking lot the size of a football field just for the tour buses, and the line snaking into Pei’s glass-pyramid entrance can run two hours long by mid-day.
Unless you are desperately short of cash, forego the free Sundays; that’s when tour buses come in force, along with seemingly endless hordes of sweet, adorable (shut UP!) schoolchildren. Open daily, with some galleries closed by rotation; admission except Sundays.
