Louvre launches 20-minute mini-guided tours for the first time, free of charge

For this summer marked by the presence of the Covid-19 coronavirus, the Louvre is launching for the first time an initiative that will get people talking: the Paris museum calls them mini-découverte, and they are mini-guided tours of twenty minutes each, to “exceptionally walk through the collections through mini-discoveries,” the presentation reads.

These are true lightning tours led by specialized guides, and centered on different themes: at the moment, the proposals available are “The Origins of the Louvre,” “Stopover in Ancient Egypt,” “The Great Italian Masters,” “The Great French Formats,” “Côté cours,” “Napoleon,” “The Treasures of the Louvre,” and “Journey through Islamic Arts.” The mini-découverte are free, do not require reservations, and are made available subject to availability. They are scheduled daily from July 8 to September 20, 2020, in French and English, in eight daily shifts: mornings at 10 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., and afternoons at 2 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.

At the moment, the mini-visits have met with some success, since 12,500 people availed themselves of this unprecedented possibility in the first month of opening: this is a small number compared to the total number of visitors who, since the date of the reopening (July 6) have come to the Louvre (200,000 people), but it is still 5 percent of the total. According to director Jean-Luc Martinez, the initiative, as we learn from the newspaper Le Monde, is intended to meet that desired “cultural democratization” by giving an extra option to young audiences (with an offer that should therefore be more appealing to visitors in the lower age groups) and those with modest economic possibilities.

An initiative that therefore finds good response in a much emptier than usual Louvre (it is estimated that, since reopening, visitor flows are four times lower than normal): could it suggest similar ideas to museum directors in the rest of the world?

Louvre launches 20-minute mini-guided tours for the first time, free of charge

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