At the top of the Daru staircase stands a headless woman striding into the wind. Her wings are spread, her wet robe clings to her legs, and she stands on the prow of a ship. You see her from the foot of the stairs, and the higher you climb the larger she grows.
At the Louvre I give everyone a single rule: you greet the Mona Lisa and move on. I have picked twelve works that are worth the visit even if the Mona Lisa were not there, and for each one I give you the room, taken from the museum’s catalogue on 22 September 2026.
The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, and on the other days it closes whole sections in rotation: on Thursdays, for example, the Egyptian antiquities on the first floor and the Dutch paintings close, and two of the works on this list close with them. I flag it work by work, and at the end I explain how to check before you set off.
Which Louvre masterpiece measures twenty-four centimetres by twenty-one?
Let’s begin!
Before you start: the Mona Lisa and the three wings
The Mona Lisa is in room 711, the Salle des États, on the first floor of the Denon wing, and she will stay there until the museum has built her a room of her own, planned by 2031. In the same room, on the opposite wall, hangs the largest painting in the museum: Veronese’s Wedding at Cana. I explain how to look at them, and how to survive the crowd, in my article on the 9 artworks to see in Paris.
The museum is divided into three wings, Denon, Sully and Richelieu, and you will find their names on every sign. The twelve works follow that order: Denon first, where the first-floor rooms stay open every day, then Sully with the antiquities, and Richelieu last. Keep in mind that every exit is final: if you step out for a coffee, you do not get back in on the same ticket.
1. The Winged Victory of Samothrace
Start here, on the landing of room 703. The Winged Victory of Samothrace is a Nike, the goddess of victory, carved in Parian marble between 200 and 175 BC and set on a ship carved in a different marble, from Lartos. With its base it stands 5.64 metres tall.
Look at her from the first step and then climb slowly. The head, the neck, the arms and the right wing are missing: the right wing you see is remade in plaster. And yet the statue does not look broken: it looks in motion, because everything that survives, the drapery and the thrusting torso, pushes forward.
She did not reach the Louvre all at once, but in three stages, in 1864, 1879 and 1891, and one block of the base stayed behind in the museum on Samothrace. When you look at her from the side, you can still see on the base the Greek letters carved to put the slabs back in order.
2. Michelangelo’s Slaves
Go down to the ground floor of the Denon wing, to the Galerie Michel-Ange, room 403. Two marbles by Michelangelo are waiting for you here, the Dying Slave and the Rebellious Slave, carved in Rome between 1513 and 1515. Each is a little over two metres tall.
They were meant for the tomb of Julius II in St Peter’s, which the pope had commissioned in 1505. The project shrank with every revision, and in the final version, installed in 1545, there was no longer room for them. Michelangelo gave them the following year to his friend Roberto Strozzi, who soon offered them to the king of France. That is why they are here and not in Rome.
Stand in front of the Dying Slave. His arm is raised behind his head and his other hand rests on his chest, and his body is slack as if in sleep; the Rebellious Slave, beside him, twists backwards against something that holds him. Behind them, in the same gallery, is Canova’s Cupid and Psyche, which has an article all to itself: Canova’s Eros and Psyche.
3. Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks
Go back up to the first floor and into the Grande Galerie, room 710. The Mona Lisa is a few metres away, and almost everyone walks past this painting without stopping: it is Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, painted between 1483 and 1494, almost two metres high.
The Virgin sits in a grotto, among rocks and plants, with the infant John the Baptist on one side and Jesus with an angel on the other. It was originally painted on panel, later transferred to canvas, and at one time its top was rounded.
The museum’s catalogue admits something the guidebooks skip: nobody knows for certain how the painting reached France. The first sure mention dates from 1625, at the château of Fontainebleau, and there are two theories about its arrival, neither of which can be proved. Leonardo painted a second version, which is now in the National Gallery in London.
4. Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
In the Salle Mollien, room 700, hangs a canvas of 4.91 by 7.16 metres. It is The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, painted in 1818-1819, and it tells a true story that made the news.
On 2 July 1816 the frigate Méduse, bound for Senegal with some four hundred people on board, ran aground on a sandbank off the African coast. A raft for a hundred and fifty people was built from the wreckage, to be towed ashore by the lifeboats. The ropes were cut, the lifeboats reached the coast and the raft was left adrift: when the brig Argus found it, twelve days later, there were fifteen survivors.
Look at how the painting is built. The dead lie at the bottom, then the living who rise up, and at the top a man waves a cloth at a tiny ship on the horizon. It is a pyramid that climbs from despair to hope. Géricault showed it at the Salon of 1819 hoping the State would buy it. Nothing came of it, perhaps because of the price, perhaps because the subject embarrassed the ministry, and the painting entered the royal collections only in 1824, when the painter was already dead.
5. Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People
In the same room 700 hangs the painting almost everyone has seen at least once in a school textbook: Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. Its full title is The 28th of July 1830: it is a barricade of the July Revolution, painted between September and December of that same year.
Delacroix signed it in red, on the right, halfway up: «Eug. Delacroix 1830». The State bought it in 1831, after the Salon, but the painting reached the museum only in 1874. If you want to know who the painter was who put a revolution on canvas two months after seeing it, I tell his story in my article on Eugène Delacroix.
6. David’s Coronation of Napoleon
In the Salle Daru, room 702, hangs a painting of 6.21 by 9.79 metres with more than two hundred life-size figures. It is The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, dated on the canvas «1806 & 1807».
Why is Napoleon not crowning himself in the painting?
Because David chose a different moment. At the ceremony of 2 December 1804, in Notre-Dame, Napoleon placed the crown on his own head, and straight afterwards he crowned the empress. David painted the second gesture: Napoleon, standing, raises the crown over the kneeling Joséphine, and the pope, seated behind him, gives his blessing.
The emperor ordered the painting three months before the ceremony; it cost 65,000 francs and took two years of work with two assistants. It was shown to the public, at the Louvre, in February 1808.
7. The Venus de Milo
Now switch wings. In the Sully wing, on the ground floor, room 345, stands the Venus de Milo, 2.04 metres tall, carved in Parian marble between 150 and 125 BC. She reached the museum in 1821, as a gift.
What exactly is missing from the Venus de Milo?
More than you would think. She has lost her left arm, most of the right one and her left foot. The bun was detached and glued back, and the tip of the nose is remade in plaster. The base was already cut down in antiquity. Walk around her: the back is covered in chips, and the drapery slipping over her hips is where the sculptor put all his skill.
8. The Great Sphinx of Tanis
Go down into the Sully crypt, room 338. Here is the Great Sphinx of Tanis, a lion with a king’s head, 4.80 metres long and carved from a single block of pink granite.
It is an object nobody can date with certainty. The museum’s catalogue gives two theories, the reign of Amenemhat II, around 1900 BC, or the Fourth Dynasty, that of the pyramids of Giza. What we do know is that at least three later pharaohs had their own names carved over the name of whoever commissioned it. The sphinx carries a thousand years of signatures.
9. The Seated Scribe
Climb to the first floor of the Sully wing, into the Egyptian antiquities, room 635, display case 10. The Seated Scribe is 53.7 centimetres tall: it is a painted limestone statue from the Fourth Dynasty, between 2675 and 2545 BC. The museum bought it in 1854.
He sits cross-legged, with the papyrus scroll open on his knees and his right hand in the position of someone writing. Move close to the eyes. The whites are alabaster, the irises rock crystal, the outline copper, and in the light of the case they look wet: it is the detail that makes everyone stop here.
Warning: the Egyptian antiquities on the first floor are closed on Thursdays. If Thursday is your day, the Scribe is off the list.
10. The Code of Hammurabi
In the Richelieu wing, on the ground floor, room 227, stands a black basalt stele 2.25 metres tall. It is the Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon between 1792 and 1750 BC, and it is one of the oldest law codes to have come down to us.
Look at the top. The relief shows the king standing, in his high-brimmed cap, before the sun god Shamash, seated on a throne, who hands him a ring and a rod: they are the symbols of power, and the scene tells anyone reading it that those laws come from the god. Below, over the whole surface, the laws run in cuneiform script. The stele was found at Susa, in Iran, in the excavations of 1901-1902.
In the same section of the Richelieu wing are the winged human-headed bulls from the palace of Khorsabad, in Iraq: stop there before you go upstairs, because beside them even the stele looks small.
11. Vermeer’s Lacemaker
Climb to the second floor of the Richelieu wing, room 837. Here is the answer to the question at the start: The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer measures 24 centimetres by 21. It was painted around 1669-1670, and the museum bought it in 1870.
A young woman bends over her lace pillow, the bobbins between her fingers. Look at the bottom left: red and white threads spill out of the sewing cushion, painted blurred, almost running, while the hands are sharp. Vermeer keeps the middle ground sharp and blurs the foreground, as a lens would. The light comes from the right, which is rare in his paintings, and the book on the table is probably a small Bible.
Warning: the Northern European paintings on the second floor of the Richelieu wing are closed on Thursdays and partly on Wednesdays. The Lacemaker is the work on this list you are most likely to miss.
12. The Napoleon III apartments
Finish on the first floor of the Richelieu wing, in the Napoleon III apartments. It is not a work of art but a home: the state rooms of the Second Empire, with their crystal chandeliers, red velvets and gilding.
After three hours of masterpieces, it is the room that reminds you the Louvre was a palace before it was a museum. The museum warns that these rooms can close because of the weather, so if you find them open, do not leave them for last.
Practical information
Data checked on 22 September 2026 on the official website louvre.fr and in the collections catalogue. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you leave.
Tickets. The ticket costs 22 euros if you are a resident or citizen of a country of the European Economic Area, and 32 euros if you come from outside it. The United Kingdom is not in the EEA, so a visitor from Britain pays 32 euros, as does one from the United States. The ticket covers the collections, the exhibitions and, on the same day or the next, the Musée Delacroix. The audio guide costs 6 euros. Free admission. Under-18s of any nationality go in free, as do young people aged 18 to 25 who are residents or citizens of the European Economic Area. The museum is free for everyone on the first Friday of the month after 18:00, except in July and August, and on 14 July. Opening hours. On Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday it opens at 9:00 and closes at 18:00; on Wednesday and Friday it stays open until 21:00. It is closed on Tuesdays. The last admission is one hour before closing. Closed rooms. Every month the museum publishes the plan of the rooms open day by day, on the «Plan d’ouverture des salles» page of its website. Open it the evening before: that is where you find out whether your day is the one when the Egyptian antiquities or the Dutch paintings close. Booking. The museum advises booking a time slot even if you go in free or have the Paris Museum Pass, which covers the Louvre. The official website warns against sites that imitate its ticket office: check the address before you pay. Getting there. The metro stops at Palais-Royal - Musée du Louvre, on lines 1 and 7. The pyramid courtyard is open from 7:30 to 21:00. How long to allow. The twelve works in this guide, with the walks between wings, need three and a half hours. If you only have two hours, do the first six, all in the Denon wing.
The exhibitions on at the Louvre, with their dates, are in the table of exhibitions in Paris. For the queues and the alternative entrances there is how to skip the line at the Louvre.
Where to go from here
The Louvre has a neighbour that almost nobody opens: in the Rohan wing of the same palace, with its entrance on rue de Rivoli, is the Musée des Arts décoratifs, with its own ticket and its own rooms. Across the Seine, ten minutes on foot through the Tuileries garden, is the Musée d’Orsay, which picks up the story of painting where the Raft of the Medusa leaves it. And if David’s coronation has left you curious to see where Napoleon ended up, his tomb is at the Invalides, in the Musée de l’Armée.
Photo credits: Daru staircase with the Winged Victory and Seated Scribe by Shonagon (CC0); Code of Hammurabi by Fred Romero (CC BY 2.0); Galerie Michel-Ange by Mossot (CC BY-SA 3.0); Napoleon III apartments by איתן קרסנטי (CC BY-SA 4.0), all from Wikimedia Commons. The Raft of the Medusa and The Lacemaker are in the public domain.
