I understand the desire to warn people about how the Louvre is kind of problematic tourist wise because of how packed it is, and if all you want is to see La Joconde and La Venus de Milo then definitely don’t go there. But if you love art / museums, I would never advise anyone on earth to skip the Louvre, it’s probably one of the most wonderful museums in the world, I’ve been there I don’t know how many times and I still have hundreds of things to see so I’ll go there again for sure, many times.
What I would say though, is to not make the mistake to consider the Louvre as “one thing”, but more like an agregate of dozens of museums in one crazy place. So just decide to visit one space that fits your taste or your curiosity, and dedicate an afternoon or even a day to it and that’s that, don’t fall into the trap of wanting to see everything, you end up in a horse’s race that’s both exhausting and utterly pointless. This Museum has 35 000 pieces of art on display, around 600 000 in stocks which means it’s constantly renewed, it can’t be missed if you like museums, it’s just an endless maze of art history that you can get lost into for weeks.
So maybe skip the shiny superstar paintings / sculpture, erase the tourists rushing through the corridors from your mental picture of the place, but then, do go to the louvre, and take your time, it’s like a city inside the city, you just have to accept you won’t get to see / feel it all in the short amount of time of a day. And when you feel you’ve seen enough, be it after an hour, a day, a week, just leave, but that’s an advice I’d give for any museum, sometimes my desire for completion gets the better of me and I forget it’s not about that and I get too tired to enjoy anything.
