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Wheelchair Access at the Louvre Museum
Wheelchair Access at the Louvre Museum - The Musée du Louvre is one of the largest and most spectacular museums in the world. It is absolutely enormous and takes a full day or more to visit. It consists of 3 different wings with paintings, sculptures, and other objects spread across 4 floors in each wing. If you were to walk or roll the entire museum, you would have traveled 12 kilometers!
The building was originally a royal palace, and they have done a good job improving wheelchair access at the Louvre Museum. The vast majority of it is handicapped accessible, but it is a maze to navigate with 18 elevators and 20 wheelchair lifts. Although there are 4 main floors, there are several levels in between the main floors. There is not an elevator or wheelchair lift at every staircase, so you may have to back-track to get to the exhibit you want to see. Be sure to use the Louvre accessibility map to figure out your way through the exhibits.
You can easily spend a full day here without visiting all the exhibits. Start with the areas you definitely don't want to miss, and work your way to the exhibits you find less interesting. The Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Triump of Samothrace are three of the most famous items to see. At a minimum, make it a point to see these.
In the Richelieu wing, be sure to catch some of the French sculputres and Felmish painting. The Sully wing houses the extensive French art as well as Egyptian and Greek artifacts. The Denon wing contains some of the most famous exhibits in the galleries for Roman antiquities and Italian sculptures and painting.
Although are guided tours, these are probably difficult to keep up with if you are wheelchair user because you would have to backtrack so much to use the elevators and wheelchair lifts. A better option is to get one of the audioguides and see the museum on your own.
There are a few step-free entrances but the easiest one to find and use is at the pyramid in the main courtyard. If you are in a wheelchair, let a staff member see you and they will bring you to the front of the line.
There are several wheelchair accessible hotels near the Louvre Museum. You can get dropped off by a taxi or one of the accessible bus lines at the nearby Place du Carrousel. Alternatively, there is an underground parking garage that is connected to the museum.
The sidewalks near the Louvre Museum have curb cuts and the neighborhood is flat without cobblestones. The staff members in the orange vests (shown in the picture on the right) can escort disabled visitors to the front of the line.
There is level access at the entrance. The piston-like elevator takes you two levels down into the Louvre Museum.
The elevator at the entrance is located in the middle of the curved staircase shown in the picture on the left. There are various elevators throughout the buildings. The one shown below in the picture on right is one of the biggest ones:
Several places in the museum have levels in between the main floors. The Winged Triumph shown in the picture on the left and the French sculptures shown in the pictures on the right are examples of places you may have to do lots of back-tracking to get around:
The area around the Mona Lisa is crowded and shown in the picture on the left below. There are wheelchair accessible bathrooms shown in the picture on the right below:
Path from taxi drop off and bus stop to Louvre Pyramid entrance (100 meters):
