The Louvre

There are places in the world people do not visit so much as converse with. The Louvre is one of them.

For travellers who have already been to Paris several times, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Élysées and Notre-Dame may have become familiar. The Louvre keeps a particular hold: every return turns up a new story, a new angle, a beauty not noticed before.

It is not simply a museum. It is an enormous novel written in stone, gilding, painting and the ambitions of France across more than eight hundred years.

From medieval keep to royal palace

Few people know that the Louvre did not begin as a palace. At the end of the twelfth century, Philippe Auguste built it as a fortress protecting Paris from attack. Beneath the museum today you can still see the remains of those old walls.

Over the centuries the building changed. The kings of France extended and decorated it until the military fortress had become one of the finest royal palaces in Europe.

Louis XIV — the Sun King — lived at the Louvre before moving his court to Versailles. As Versailles became the emblem of royal magnificence, the Louvre entered another chapter: a place to hold art and show it to the public.

In 1793, during the Revolution, it opened officially as a museum. What had been reserved for kings became the property of everyone. That is what makes it particular: it holds both the power of the monarchy and the Enlightenment spirit of a modern France.

The glass pyramid

The first image many visitors carry is the glass pyramid in the Cour Napoléon. When it opened in 1989, the design by the architect Ieoh Ming Pei caused a serious quarrel: many people in France thought a modern glass structure had no business among centuries-old palace stone.

Time has said otherwise. The pyramid is now one of the strongest visual signs of Paris — much as the Eiffel Tower was attacked before it became the soul of the city.

In the evening, when the lights come back off the glass, the Louvre has a beauty entirely its own: at once classical and modern, memory of the past and gesture towards the future.

The Mona Lisa

Most first-time visitors have a single objective: to meet the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci's painting is smaller than people expect — about 77 by 53 centimetres. Its power is not in its size but in its mystery.

That smile has kept millions curious for more than five hundred years. Is she happy or thinking? Do the eyes really follow you? What did Leonardo mean by it?

In 1911 the picture was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian employee named Vincenzo Peruggia, who believed it belonged to Italy and should be taken home. The theft lasted more than two years and held the world's attention. When the painting was recovered, its fame had become legend.

Standing before the Mona Lisa, visitors are not only looking at a work of art. They are standing before a character that has entered the imagination of mankind.

There is far more than one painting

A common mistake is to spend the whole visit hunting the Mona Lisa and then leave. The Louvre is so large that a minute in front of each work would take months. The collection on display runs to more than 35,000 objects, from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, through Islamic art, to European painting from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

The Venus de Milo — the emblem of classical Greek beauty. Nobody knows exactly who carved it, but its elegance and its mystery have made it one of the museum's best-known masterpieces.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace — one of the strongest moments of any visit. Set at the head of the Daru staircase, she seems to be flying into a sea wind with her wings open.

The Italian Renaissance galleries — Raphael, Botticelli, Titian.

The Napoleon III apartments — for anyone drawn to the French aristocratic manner: gilt, crystal, red velvet, and the full excess of the nineteenth century.

Three buildings, three stories

It is sometimes said that Paris can be understood through three buildings: the Eiffel Tower stands for the future, Notre-Dame for belief, and the Louvre for the memory of mankind.

For travellers who love art, history and the European way of living, the Louvre is not a place to be photographed in front of. It is an encounter with a civilisation.

Because after several hundred years, among those old stone walls, the museum still puts a fine question to everyone who enters: what makes a work of art outlast its time and become permanent? And perhaps the moment you stand silent in front of one masterpiece, in the middle of Paris, is the moment you find your answer.

Take it as a journey, not a race

A suggestion for those who already know Paris: come in late afternoon, give two hours to the works that matter most to you, then walk out through the Tuileries as the light turns gold on the avenues of trees. Paris at that hour stops being a tourist city and becomes a film set kept for you alone.