The Louvre is one of the world's largest museums & certainly the most visited, with more than 9.7 million visitors each year.

Around 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace.

I first visited the Louvre in 1995 with my father whilst on a whistle stop bus tour. Our main objective was to see the famous Mona Lisa & we then spent another hour or two moving through the various exhibitions amazed at the beauty, often size, as well as history of the objects.

Since my first visit I always wanted to return & did so numerous times on our 2 week visit to Paris in 2011. As we have a month in Paris on this trip, we have opted for annual tickets which makes it more economical to visit our favorite museum. We can drop in for a couple of hours whenever we have some spare time as the Louvre is only about 150 metres away.