Louvre Trivia
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49 free Louvre trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Louvre trivia for art lovers, Paris visitors and anyone who has queued under the glass pyramid or fought the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa. This quiz starts with the building: Philip II's twelfth-century fortress, Francis I's Renaissance rebuild, Louis XIV's departure for Versailles, the Revolution's decision to open the royal collection to the public on 10 August 1793, and Napoleon's short-lived Musee Napoleon stuffed with plunder. Then it tours the collection and its stories: how the Mona Lisa came to France and how Vincenzo Peruggia walked out with it in 1911, the farmer who dug up the Venus de Milo, the headless Winged Victory on the Daru staircase, the Code of Hammurabi, the Seated Scribe, Veronese's enormous Wedding at Cana, Gericault's Raft, Delacroix's Liberty and David's Coronation. It finishes with the modern museum: Mitterrand's Grand Louvre, I. M. Pei's pyramid and its 666-pane myth, the eight departments, the Louvre-Lens and Louvre Abu Dhabi outposts, record visitor numbers and the October 2025 crown-jewel robbery. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you enjoy this quiz, try our Paris, art history and famous paintings quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which side of the Seine does the Louvre stand?
The Right Bank
The Right Bank holds the Louvre in the 1st arrondissement; its long south front runs along the river between the Pont Royal and the Pont des Arts.
Q 02Which French king began the Louvre as a fortress in the late 12th century?
Philip II
Philip II, known as Philip Augustus, built the fortress around 1190 to guard the city against attack from Normandy, then held by the English kings; its foundations survive in the basement.
Q 03Which king made the Louvre the French monarchy's main residence in 1546 and rebuilt it in Renaissance style?
Francis I
Francis I demolished the medieval keep and in 1546 commissioned Pierre Lescot to rebuild the west wing in the Renaissance style seen in the Cour Carrée.
Q 04According to the Grand Larousse, the name Louvre may derive from a word for what?
A wolf-hunting den
A wolf-hunting den is the Grand Larousse's suggestion: it traces the name to Latin lupus, wolf, through the lower-Empire form lupara, a place for hunting wolves.
Q 05Louis XIV abandoned the Louvre for which palace in 1682?
Versailles
Versailles became the seat of the court in 1682; the Louvre was left to the royal collections and, from 1692, to the academies, which held exhibitions there.
Q 06On what date did the Louvre open as a public museum?
10 August 1793
10 August 1793 was the first anniversary of the monarchy's fall; the Muséum central des arts opened with 537 paintings, mostly royal and confiscated church property.
Q 07In 1803 the Louvre was renamed in honour of whom?
Napoleon
Napoleon, then First Consul, lent his name to the Musée Napoléon in 1803; its director Vivant Denon filled it with art seized across Europe, much of it returned after 1815.
Q 08Which Louvre wing housed the French Ministry of Finance until 1989?
Richelieu wing
The Richelieu wing, along the rue de Rivoli, held the Ministry of Finance until it moved to Bercy in 1989; the Grand Louvre project turned it into galleries opened in 1993.
Q 09Roughly how many visitors did the Louvre receive in 2018?
10.2 million
10.2 million visitors came in 2018, lifted by the Delacroix retrospective and Beyoncé and Jay-Z's video shot in the galleries, up from 8.1 million the year before.
Q 10Which French president launched the Grand Louvre project in 1981?
Francois Mitterrand
Francois Mitterrand announced the Grand Louvre in September 1981, months after taking office; the project cleared the Finance Ministry out of the north wing and added the glass entrance by 1989.
Q 11How tall is the glass Louvre Pyramid?
21.6 metres
21.6 metres tall on a 34-metre square base, the pyramid rises at 51.52 degrees, the same slope as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Q 12How many rhombus-shaped glass panes does the Louvre Pyramid actually contain?
603
603 rhombus-shaped panes plus 70 triangular ones make 673 glass segments in all, a count that refutes the legend of a satanic total.
Q 13Where did the rumour that the pyramid has 666 panes originate?
An official 1980s construction brochure
An official 1980s construction brochure cited 666 panes, apparently twice; newspapers repeated it, and the figure later fed the satanic legend popularised by The Da Vinci Code.
Q 21In 1956 a Bolivian visitor damaged the Mona Lisa by throwing what at it?
A rock
A rock thrown by Ugo Ungaza Villegas in December 1956 shattered the glass and dislodged a speck of pigment near the left elbow; bulletproof glass was installed afterwards.
Q 22Where was the Mona Lisa hidden when war threatened in 1938-39?
Chateau de Chambord
Chateau de Chambord on the Loire received the Mona Lisa in the first convoys of late August 1939; it then moved on to Louvigny, Loc-Dieu, Montauban and Montal before 1945.
Q 23The Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 by whom?
A Greek farmer
A Greek farmer, Yorgos Kentrotas, uncovered the statue while digging on Milos in April 1820; the French naval ensign Olivier Voutier, watching, urged him to keep going.
Q 14Which architect designed the Louvre Pyramid?
I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei, chosen without a competition in 1983, designed the steel-and-glass pyramid as a new central entrance; it was inaugurated in March 1989 for the Revolution's bicentenary year.
Q 15On what material is the Mona Lisa painted?
White poplar panel
White poplar panel is the support: Leonardo painted the oil portrait, traditionally identified as Lisa del Giocondo, wife of a Florentine silk merchant, on a single plank about 77 by 53 centimetres.
Q 16Which Leonardo painting in the Louvre shows Mary seated on her mother's lap?
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne shows Mary seated on her mother's lap reaching for the infant Jesus, who grasps a lamb; Leonardo left it unfinished at his death.
Q 17Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?
Vincenzo Peruggia
Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who had helped fit the Louvre's glass cases, walked out with the panel in August 1911; Apollinaire was arrested and Picasso questioned before the thief was found.
Q 18How was the Mona Lisa's thief finally caught, two years after the theft?
Trying to sell it to the Uffizi's director in Florence
Trying to sell it to the Uffizi's director in Florence, he wrote to the dealer Alfredo Geri, who brought in director Giovanni Poggi; the panel was authenticated and he was arrested in December 1913.
Q 19On what day of the week was the Mona Lisa stolen in 1911?
Monday, the weekly closing day
Monday, the weekly closing day, left only staff inside on 21 August 1911; the thief, in a workman's white smock, lifted the panel from the wall, wrapped it in the smock and walked out.
Q 20What Guinness World Record does the Mona Lisa hold?
Highest known painting insurance valuation
Highest known painting insurance valuation is the Guinness entry: the Mona Lisa was assessed at 100 million dollars before its 1962–63 tour to Washington and New York, around a billion in 2020s terms.
Q 24Based on a marble hand found beside her, what was the Venus de Milo thought to be holding?
An apple
An apple held in a marble hand found with the statue suggests the Judgement of Paris, in which Aphrodite won the golden apple; whether the hand belongs to her is debated.
Q 25The Winged Victory of Samothrace stands on a base shaped like what?
The prow of a ship
The prow of a ship, carved in grey Rhodian marble, carries the Nike as if alighting on a warship's bow; the group was found on Samothrace by Charles Champoiseau in 1863.
Q 26Since 1884 the Winged Victory has stood at the top of which Louvre staircase?
Escalier Daru
Escalier Daru, the great staircase of the Denon wing, has shown the Nike on its landing since 1884; the right hand, found in 1950, is displayed in a case nearby.
Q 27The Code of Hammurabi stele was rediscovered in 1901 at which site in present-day Iran?
Susa
Susa, the Elamite capital, is where Jacques de Morgan's team dug up the 2.25-metre basalt stele in 1901–02; King Shutruk-Nakhunte had carried it off as plunder from Babylonia around 1150 BC.
Q 28The Seated Scribe, one of the Louvre's Egyptian treasures, has eyes inlaid with what?
Rock crystal and magnesite
Rock crystal and magnesite form the eyes: a crystal iris set in red-veined white magnesite, ringed with copper, giving the Old Kingdom scribe found at Saqqara in 1850 his unsettling gaze.
Q 29Which Egyptologist, decipherer of the Rosetta Stone, first curated the Louvre's Egyptian collection?
Jean-Francois Champollion
Jean-Francois Champollion, who cracked the hieroglyphs in 1822, became the first curator of the Egyptian department in 1826 and steered Charles X's purchase of the Durand, Salt and Drovetti collections.
Q 30Which huge Veronese canvas, plundered from a Venetian monastery by the French in 1797, is the Louvre's largest painting?
The Wedding at Cana
The Wedding at Cana, nearly 10 metres wide, was painted in 1562–63 for the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore; the monks' contract paid Veronese 324 ducats plus a cask of wine.