It is also important to know what to skip in the Louvre. In that category, in my view, is the Mona Lisa.
It is rather cheeky to not line up before the Mona Lisa, in Room 29 of Denon. Just glance at it from a distance, over the heads of the crowd. It is muddy. Not a patch on da Vinci’s glorious woman in Krakow (see Chapter 8). Still, it would be rather eccentric to say, “I was at the Louvre the other day and I gave the Mona Lisa a skip.”