Almost every great museum in the world can be walked your own way: you go in, pick a room, double back if you feel like it and leave when you want. This one does not work like that, and most of the frustrations you read about it come from not knowing that in advance.
01 How it fits you
The profile that fits here is someone who comes for specific works and arrives having done their homework. If you know what you want to see and accept that the itinerary is set by the institution and not by you, the density of what is inside repays any discomfort. If your way of enjoying a museum is to wander without a plan, this will feel hostile.
02 The route runs one way
This is the feature that defines the visit and it is worth internalising: the museums are organised as a chained itinerary of more than seven kilometres walked in a single direction. There are no shortcuts and no going back. If you walk past a room because you were talking, that room stays behind.
That design has a practical consequence almost nobody anticipates: you do not choose the order of your visit. The rooms that interest you most may fall at kilometre five, when you have already been on your feet for three hours. Which is why here it genuinely pays to look at the plan before going in and decide where you are going to spend your attention.
03 What it will cost you
The first bill is physical, and it is always underestimated. Seven kilometres of galleries are walked standing, indoors, with barely anywhere to sit and on hard floors. It is a day's walk, not a two-hour cultural visit, and if it also comes with July's outdoor queue, at 31 degrees and no shade, it gets harder still.
The second is about capacity, and no advance ticket fully solves it. The museums received 6.8 million visitors in 2024, and all of them pass along the same corridor. Booking saves you the entrance queue, not the one inside. The only thing that genuinely reduces the crush is the hour: since January 2024 they open from 8:00 to 19:00, precisely to spread the flow.
And the third is about access, and it is worth checking in advance if it affects you: the itinerary includes changes of level, historic staircases and long stretches with no obvious alternative. If you travel with reduced mobility or a pushchair, look at the route and the access options beforehand, because once inside there is little room to manoeuvre.
04 How I would build this day
First thing, the moment they open: straight into the museum, short list decided, without straying in the first hundred metres. It is the only point in the day when you can stop in front of something without being pushed, and it does not last. Come out mid-morning, when the peak starts to show.
Midday outside the enclosure, eating in the neighbouring district and genuinely sitting down, because your legs will thank you. And late afternoon for the square and the colonnade, which are outdoors, have no capacity limit and look far better in low light than at midday. Split that way, the day goes twice as far.
05 The verdict
For anyone coming for the works, few visits in the world give so much for one ticket: 54 museums, on the order of 1,400 rooms and a collection with no equal for density. The building, moreover, stands comparison with what it holds, and that is not common.
But three conditions have to be accepted, and whoever does not accept them leaves annoyed. That you choose the itinerary only up to a point. That the queue sets the pace. And that if you go in April, June, July or August, you will share those seven kilometres with a great many people. Accept all three and it is one of the most extraordinary visits there is.
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