Musee du
Louvre (II)
Finding your way around the museum
There are two entrances to the museum where you can buy tickets. The
main entrance, with a bookshop, café and information desk, is
the Hall Napoléon, reached via the Pyramid or the underground
Carrousel du Louvre. The Carrousel du Louvre can be accessed directly
from the metro, on either side of the Arc du Carrousel and at 99, rue
de Rivoli. The other entrance, the Porte des Lions, at the
Tuileries end of the Denon wing, gives direct access to the arts of
Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. For those who already have a
ticket, the entrance in the passage Richelieu (between Place du Palais
Royal and Cour Napoléon) avoids the queue for the pyramid.
Lifts and escalators lead from the Hall
Napoléon to each of the three wings of the four floor building.
The wings are Sully, around the Cour Carrée; Denon, the south
wing; and Richelieu, the north wing. At first overwhelming and
seemingly nonsensical, the layout of the museum is a delight to
unravel. The indispensable floor-plan, available free from the
information desk in the hall Napoléon, highlights some of the
more renowned masterpieces, such as the Mona Lisa, for those wishing to
do a whistle-stop tour, although don't expect to be able to contemplate
them peacefully.
The museum's collections are divided into seven main
categories : Painting, prints and drawings, Oriental Antiquities and
Islamic Arts, Egyptian Antiquities, Greek Etruscan and Roman
Antiquities, Objets d'Art, and Sculpture. Each category spreads over
more than one wing and several floors. There is also an exhibition on
the history of the Louvre, called the Medieval Louvre in which you can
visit the foundations of Philipe Auguste's fortress and Charles V's
fourteenth-century palace conversion via the moats under the cour
Carrée on the entresol (lower ground level) of the Sully wing. A
new, though probably temporary, collection, made up of 120 works of art
from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, opened in 2000. It is
likely that the collection will be moved to the new collection at the
quai Branly in the near future.
Musée d'Orsay
: Visit and collections
