Louvre Highlights Tour: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo & Winged Victory

At any given time, there are 35,000 works on show in the Louvre collection. You could spend an entire vacation trying to see all of it and still only scratch the surface - and that's after you got past the long lines every morning. If, however, you only have a couple of hours; our Skip the Line Louvre Highlights Tour is the perfect way to get the best from your time.

After meeting your expert, art historian guide in front of the Louvre, along with a group of no more than 19 other people, you'll skip long entrance lines and stroll through security scanners right into the galleries. Following a carefully-planned itinerary, you'll see Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa; sculptures by Michelangelo and Antonio Canova; classic paintings from the French Romantics like Delacroix's Victory Leading the People and Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa; the iconic statue of the Venus de Milo; and even France's crown jewels.

Along the way your guide will give you the context and background you'll need to understand what you're seeing and to appreciate its beauty and importance. You'll also hear a lot of behind-the-scenes stories like how a solitary worker managed to steal the Mona Lisa; and how a story of shipwreck and cannibalism on the front page of a newspaper became one of France's most beloved paintings.

As you explore, you'll also experience the full splendor of the Louvre as a building. Built first as a defensive fortress and once a seat for French royalty, this enormous palace hosted grand balls and all types of royal affairs before it was a museum. As you move through its galleries your guide will bring them to life with stories of the kings and queens whose footsteps you're walking in.

This short but very sweet skip the line tour distills the Louvre Museum collection into a very manageable two hours; so you can be in and out without having to worry about anything but enjoying the art.