Short answer: yes for art lovers and most first-timers — but it’s the most skippable of Paris’s big three if museums aren’t your thing, and the Musée d’Orsay is the better pick for many visitors.
Go to the Louvre if you want the world’s greatest museum, you’re happy to commit at least three hours, and you book a morning slot.
Pick the Orsay instead if you have one museum slot, prefer Impressionism to antiquities, and want a building you can actually finish.
What you’re really buying
A ticket (around €22, timed entry, book online) to the largest museum on Earth: 35,000 works on display across three wings. That scale is the point and the problem. The Mona Lisa room is a scrum most of the day; meanwhile entire wings — Mesopotamia, the French sculpture courts, Napoleon III’s apartments — sit half-empty and are magnificent.
The honest downsides
Crowds around the famous three (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory) are relentless. Navigation is genuinely confusing; without a plan you’ll spend a surprising share of your visit walking corridors. And “doing the Louvre” in an hour leaves people tired and underwhelmed — it needs three hours minimum to be worth its ticket.
How to make it worth it
Book the first slot of the day (9am), enter via the underground Carrousel entrance rather than the pyramid, see the headline works in the first quiet hour, then spend the rest in whichever wing matches your taste. Wednesday and Friday evening openings are the calmest slots of the week.
Verdict
The Louvre rewards commitment and punishes drop-ins. Give it a planned half-day and it’s one of the great museum experiences of the world; squeeze it between two other bookings and you’ll wish you’d had a long lunch in the Tuileries instead. See our Paris city guide and how many days in Paris for where it fits.