With arguably the world’s great collection of paintings hanging in arguably Europe’s biggest royal palace, visiting the Louvre—with masterpieces ranging from Ancient Greek to Renaissance to Romanticism—is a must.

Once the palace of the ultimate kings and the biggest building in the world, today the vast horseshoe-shaped palace, built in stages over eight centuries, with its striking 20th-century pyramid entry, houses perhaps the world’s greatest collection of art treasures.

Once inside, take a moment to enjoy the modern pyramid entry—a work of art in itself. The Louvre’s huge collection covers art history from ancient times to about 1850.

Remember to look up for a sense of how, long before it was a museum, this was Europe’s premier palace. The collection includes royal French regalia—such as the crown of Louis XV, and the crown Napoleon wore on his coronation.

This museum is one of the world’s oldest—actually opened to the public during the French Revolution in 1793. I guess it just makes sense. You behead the king, inherit his palace and a vast royal collection of art, open the doors, and—voilà!—a people’s museum.

The statue of Winged Victory heralds the richness of the Louvre’s ancient collection. Two centuries before Christ, this wind-whipped masterpiece of Hellenistic Greek art stood on a bluff celebrating a great naval victory.

And nearby stands an entourage of twisting and striding statues, each modeling the ideal human form. Venus de Milo has struck her pose—like a reigning beauty queen—for 2,500 years.

The crowded Grand Gallery—about a quarter-mile long—is a reminder that you just can’t see the Louvre’s entire collection. For a quick visit, we’ll hit just a few masterpieces representing three exciting periods: Renaissance, Neoclassical, and Romantic.

François Premier, who ruled through the early 1500s, was France’s Renaissance king. His private paintings became the core of the Louvre’s collection.

It was trendy for kings to have a Renaissance genius in their court. Europe’s greatest king, Frances I, got Europe’s top genius, Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo’s crowd-pleasing masterpiece is “Mona Lisa.” This portrait is believed to be of the wife of a Florentine merchant. With her enigmatic smile, she seems to enjoy all the attention. Her body is solid and statue-like, a perfectly balanced pyramid, angled back so we can appreciate its mass. Her arm—resting on her chair—adds stability and realism. And Leonardo masterfully creates depth in Mona’s dreamy backyard.

One of the Louvre’s largest canvases shows Europe’s grandest coronation: Napoleon’s. In Jacques-Louis David’s “The Coronation of Napoleon,” the pope traveled from Rome to Paris to crown the new emperor. But Europe’s most famous megalomaniac, crown confidently in hand, pretty much ran the coronation show himself. The pope looks a little neglected.

Napoleon would approve of everything in this room. Greek, Roman, heroic, or patriotic themes; clean, simple, and logical—it’s pure Neoclassical. This Parisian woman, wearing ancient garb and a Pompeii hairdo, reclines on a Roman-style couch—perfectly in vogue.

The reaction to Neoclassicism was a romantic movement: “Romanticism.” Romanticism meant putting feeling over intellect, passion over restrained judgment. Artists now created not merely what the eyes saw, but what the heart felt.

What better setting for an emotional work than the story of a tragic shipwreck? In Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa,” we see a human pyramid, ranging from death and despair at its base to a pinnacle of hope as one of the survivors spots a ship—which ultimately comes to their rescue. If art controls your heartbeat…this is a masterpiece.

The Romantic movement championed nationalistic causes of the 19th century. Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” shows the citizens in 1830, once again asserting their power and raising the French flag at a barricade in those troublesome back streets of Paris. This painting and that struggle reverberate with the French people to this day.