Paris Attractions

Venue: Louvre Museum    When: Daily; not Tue

The Louvre, palace of kings, architectural centrepiece of the French capital and one of the top five museums in the world, is unmissable.

The Louvre officially became a public museum soon after the French revolution, making it, along with the Ashmolean in Oxford and the Vatican in Rome, one of the earliest of European museums. The collection largely consists of treasures once belonging to the French monarchy and aristocracy, further boosted by the successful plunderings of European treasures by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The treasures are now organised in seven departments: Oriental Antiquities and Islamic Art; Egyptian Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities; Sculptures; Objet's d'Art (Decorative Arts); Paintings and Prints and Drawings. Sculptures include some rather famous pieces such as the Venus de Milo, Michelangelo's Slaves and Canova's Cupid and Psyche.

The painting department is the most breathtaking of all. It covers 14th-19th centuries and France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Flanders, Holland and Britain. It contains the most famous painting in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1503-1506), which was relocated in 2005 to a spacious, temperature-controlled room designed by Peruvian architect, Lorenzo Piqueras. Now the six million visitors that come each year to catch a glimpse of her enigmatic smile have more room to breathe!

With the exception of the odd brilliant David in the USA, the Louvre has all the best French Neo-Classical and Romantic art. Empire image-makers Jacques Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres dominate the 18th and 19th century rooms. David's The Oath of the Horati, the first painting generally agreed to do any justice to the principles of classicism since Poussin, is there, as well as his terrifying Rape of the Sabine Women, his giant, overpopulated Consecration of Napoleon and his seductive, decadent Madame Recamier.

Ingres is represented by The Turkish Bath and several exquisite portraits. The big Delacroix canvases are in the same room - The Death of Sardanapalus, Liberty leading the People - and the hugely popular Raft of the Medusa by Géricault.

Any description of the Louvre's wonders can only be personal - they are so various and so many. Our advice is to select a department, or just a few rooms, and visit in short bursts. It's free on the first Sunday of each month - so go then if you are poor, and crowd tolerant. Cafes are ubiquitous, though extortionately expensive. There is, rather usefully, a post office just next to the main postcard shop if you care to send a few cultured missives back home.

In a process of modernisation that has been going on for over a decade, millions of francs have been lavished on this cultural symbol of a nation. Improvements have included the construction of a dazzling (and controversial) glass pyramid in the museum's forecourt, labyrinthine corridors, shopping malls and amazingly cavernous exhibition spaces underneath the main building. New galleries are still being opened and the vast collection further rationalised: the government's aim is to make this a museum to beat all others.