Elaine Sciolino, formerly the Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, has volunteered herself as a chatty, amiable tour guide. In “Adventures in the Louvre” she does not try to take readers through every room or compile the museum’s definitive history. Instead she focuses on themes and small details that will interest them.

The author has a journalist’s knack for posing a good question. Of all the faces in the Louvre, “Who is the fairest one of all?” she asks Sébastien Allard, director of paintings, who offers five suggestions (by Jacques-Louis David, Rembrandt, Pisanello, Titian and Johannes Vermeer). Many Louvre employees find Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, the most famous work of art in the world, overrated. Yet around four-fifths of visitors come mainly to see it, bypassing other treasures.

Even those who are attuned to the collection’s subtleties have something to learn. For example, “MNR” (for Musées Nationaux Récupération, or National Museums Recovery) is marked on the placards of around 1,700 works. The acronym denotes “orphan” works, probably seized from Jews in the second world war, which are in the Louvre’s care but not part of its collection.

For the Louvre, history ended in 1848—later masterpieces are in France’s other national museums—but its transformation continues. Recently Emmanuel Macron, the country’s president, announced a renovation costing €700m-800m ($800m-900m), which would, among other things, give the “Mona Lisa” her own gallery. Visitors will have even more need of a discerning guide.

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