Every year, millions of visitors to Paris come to the Louvre, attracted by masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and other magnificent works of art that are icons of human achievement. But the museum – once a forbidding fortress built to protect and house French kings – is often more intimidating than inviting.

In Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, former New York Times Paris bureau chief and bestselling author Elaine Sciolino shows how anyone can forge an intimate connection with the museum and be transformed by its seductive power. Blending journalism, travelogue, history, and memoir, Sciolino demystifies the Louvre, the largest and most famous museum in the world. She shares stories and secrets about her favorite artworks, both legendary and overlooked, and takes us into the gardens, basements, and corridors, and onto the rooftops.

Sciolino approaches the Louvre as neither an art historian nor a tour guide but as a lifelong reporter. She introduces us to the people who are the lifeblood of the museum: the curators selecting and arranging the artworks, the artisans producing frames and engravings, the builders overseeing restorations, the firefighters protecting the site, the gardeners who match the flowers outside the museum to the works of art within.

Through Sciolino’s encounters and conversations, we meet the night watchman who believes in ghosts, the director of paintings who identifies five portraits more beautiful than the Mona Lisa, the curator who discovered a missing feather of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the window washer who makes rainbows on the IM Pei pyramid, the photographer who finds queerness in ancient Greek and Roman sculptures.

She has interviewed dozens of current and former Louvre officials, some of them several times, including Laurence des Cars, the museum’s passionate director, who has embarked on an ambitious project to renovate the aging structure and create a grand new entrance and new underground spaces, including a special gallery just for the Mona Lisa.

An irrepressible and charming travel companion, Sciolino reveals a Louvre filled with unexpected mysteries, delights, and frustrations. It has, after all, been renovated by kings and bureaucrats more than twenty times since it was built in the twelfth century; it now has more than 400 rooms, and if you walk through every one of them, you’d get nine miles of exercise – about 18,000 steps.

Sciolino also takes us beyond the building’s imposing walls. She explores the sixty-seven-acre Tuileries gardens next door and travels to the satellite museums in the northern French city of Lens and in Abu Dhabi.

Through Sciolino’s eyes, we encounter a museum that is an elusive and seductive object of desire for anyone who longs for the connection and inspiration that great art provides. With her by our side, we cannot help falling in love with the Louvre. As she writes, “Over time and long acquaintance, the Louvre has pulled me into its grasp. I no longer see it as a fortress, palace, or museum but as a living, breathing character with multiple personalities. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love. And that is an experience worth sharing.

About the Author

Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times. She began her journalism career at Newsweek, then moved to The New York Times, where she has held several posts, including chief diplomatic correspondent, CIA correspondent, United Nations bureau chief, and New York City metro reporter. In 2010, she was decorated with the Legion of Honor, the highest distinction of the French state. She is the author of five previous books, including the bestsellers The Seine and The Only Street in Paris, which were also published by Norton. She and her husband have lived in Paris since 2002.