About This Location
Look up at the palace walls around you - this place was a seat of power long before it was a museum. For centuries, French rulers expanded the Louvre as a royal residence, then the French Revolution changed its role completely. In 1793, it opened as a public museum, turning a former palace into a home for the nation’s art. It helps to picture the Louvre as two experiences at once. One is the collection - thousands of objects spanning ancient civilizations to later European painting and sculpture. The other is the building itself: long corridors designed for kings, huge ceremonial rooms, and galleries that feel like they never end. The Grande Galerie is the perfect example - a majestic, seemingly endless hall that became one of the first areas opened to the public after the Revolution, and it still feels like a symbolic “spine” of the museum. Inside, the scale can be overwhelming, so it helps to choose a few anchors. The Mona Lisa is displayed in the Salle des États (Room 711) in the Denon Wing - the Louvre’s largest room, built to handle the crowds that gather around it. Nearby, the museum often feels like a set of “greatest hits” you recognize instantly, even if it is the first visit: the kind of place where a single staircase or doorway suddenly opens into a world-famous masterpiece. The Louvre also keeps evolving. Visitor numbers have pushed the building’s limits, and French officials announced plans for a new entrance and a dedicated, independently accessible space for the Mona Lisa, with a target completion around 2031. It is a reminder that even the most historic museum in the world still has to adapt to modern crowds. Take a last look at the palace courtyards before going in. The real magic of the Louvre is the contrast - quiet stone façades outside, then inside, a journey through time that can feel like walking through the memory of whole civilizations.