I have been dying to write about THAT Lou for some time now, but I wanted to do so with the voice of experience. Alas, time and scheduling constraints have kept me from joining one of her acclaimed treasure hunt tours thus far. But the idea is SO COOL! Imagine visiting a museum and having fun! So here is Daisy’s oeuvre in all it’s press release glory! I will get on one of her hunts one of these days…I promise! In the meantime I urge you to play the THAT Lou game on your next trip to Paris or on your next rainy day off! It’s a great idea for groups of friends and or family, student groups or even employee groups working on team building.

OVERVIEW

Hello! I’d like to introduce THATLou, which stands for Treasure Hunt at the Louvre. Our aim is to make the sometimes overwhelming Louvre manageable, focused and fun through thematic romps up, down and around the grandfather of Old-Master museums. But careful: No running!

Thus far we have 12 themes in 4 languages catering to various markets

• the family-friendly Beauty + the Beast(iary) which gets hunters to imaginary creatures such as Egyptian sphinxes, griffins, dragons and other beastly bestiary, with Louvre icons such as the Mona Lisa or Roman Three Graces to balance the visit with beauty
• The Love Hunt caps off a Romantic Parisian weekend with a Friday night hunt, sending them in search of prancing putti, the divine Venus de Milo, or Veronese’s Wedding Feast of Cana (bonus pts if you count how many dogs are in this 130-character behemoth)
• Food + Wine is another popular theme for Foodies who’ve come to eat their way through France. Just think of sumptuous 17^th-Century Dutch still lifes, or the Borghese Vase with Dionysus and his savage satyrs (you get extra points for posing like a dancing maenad for this one).

THATLou was started in March 2012; by early 2013 we crossed the Seine to create THATd’Or in conjunction with the AFMO (American Friends of the Musée d’Orsay). In the past 1.5 years we’ve been reviewed in more than 40 places, including Fodor’s, The Boston Globe, AFAR and Time Out. On Trip Advisor we’re ranked in the top 10%.

UP-COMING HUNTS :

Periodically we have public hunts, creating new themes. This Hallowe’en we’re going ghoulish with a night Death Hunt on 30 Oct, for 3-Kings Day we’ll have the Kings + Leaders hunt on Sun 5 Jan (heavy on fancy French monarchs and scandalous Roman emperors) and on 2 March we’re planning a Musical Hunt, hitting high notes such as Frans Hals’s Buffoon Playing a Lute.

How to play

Teams of 2 to 4 people are given 20-odd pieces of treasure worth varying points and are tasked with photographing themselves in front of as many pieces as possible within the given time. A photo of each treasure accompanies snappy write-ups and is clearly identified (matching the highlighted map). Embedded bonus questions range from the silly to knowledge-based questions referring to more in-depth articles on the THATLou blog (allowing it to be as educational as hunters wish).

Louvre Numbers

If you made the 65,000 m² Louvre into a straight line it would be 8 miles. Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre, said that 80% of the nearly 9-million annual visitors go for the Mona Lisa alone. Our goal is to dilute those numbers, give hunters a small sense of Louvre-ownership, get them to untrodden corners and most importantly to give them an interactive overview to the grandfather of Old Master museums.

Prices + Louvre Logistics

Private Hunts are unaccompanied and cost 25€ per person, not including Louvre admission tickets. If you’d like us to buy your entry tix they’re 18€ a pop (free for EU citizens under 25; Non-EU citizens under 18). Please let us know if you’d like to be coupled against another family or prefer to play among yourselves and if you have children, how old they are. The Louvre is closed Tuesdays, open late (till 9.45 pm) on Wednesdays and Fridays and free on the 1^st Sunday of each month