The Louvre is not just one of the largest museums of the world, it is also a historic 12th century palace where the Royal Family lived in till 1682. The museum itself opened on 1793 and is now the most popular museum in the world with some 10 million visitors every day.
Don’t even think of seeing the whole museum in a single visit, leave alone a single day. Just to give you an idea of the vastness of the museum, it houses nearly 380,000 objects dating from every age (prehistoric to medieval to modern) over an area of 60,000 square meters. A recent study indicated that seeing the museum artifacts for 10 seconds each would take around three months of viewing.
It houses the world famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci, apart from the Venus of Milo, the Nike of Samothrake and the Dying Slave by Michelangelo. The Mona Lisa is surrounded by bullet proof glass and is protected by guards at all times.
The most modern addition to the museum – the glass pyramid was built in 1989 by the renowned American architect I.M. Pei. The glass pyramid allows the sunlight to enter the underground floor.