Well, there comes a time when you just have to do the real tourist stuff. And there’s nothing more Paris touristy, except maybe the Eiffel Tower, than the Louvre. I mean, you just can’t ignore it. All our trips start out at our local Metro stop, Lamarck-Caulaincourt, about three blocks from the apartment.
The Metro is extensive and convenient and is the only way to get around Paris. Once you understand the simple rules of navigation, it’s almost impossible to get lost. If it was, I’d surely do it. All the lines run across Paris from one end to the other, each with different starting and ending terminals. Those end points represent the direction you want to be traveling on that line to get to whatever intermediate stop you desire. The lines intersect all over the place, so you can get anywhere by changing trains at intersection points. As long as you don’t actually exit any station and come above ground, you can keep changing and ride everywhere on one ticket. We carry our map book, with it’s Metro map, wherever we go. We buy our tickets in packs of ten, called carnets (car-nay), for 12.5 euros. This ends up being a pretty good savings over the single ticket price of 1.7 euros. The only problem is that not all stations have a live ticket seller who will take your paper money for them; many have only automated machines that take only coins or European credit cards, the kind with chips in them, not our striped kind. Some of the stations that have attendants will take U.S.-type cards, if they have the proper reader equipment and if the attendant is in a decent mood. Some are great, others couldn’t care less. There are other means, such as passes, but we worked out the economics and the carnets suit us best. Anyway, we’re off to the Louvre on our local line, # 12, towards its southern terminus, Mairie d’Issy. Change at Concorde to line # 1 towards its east terminus, Vincennes, and get off at Palais Royale/Musee de Louvre. Except for several hundred stairs at the stations, piece of cake. We’re there!
Along with thousands of other souls, all of whom are queued up to buy tickets. See that mob running from the center to the right? That’s the line. It bends way around in the back. Ah, but we have read our guidebooks, all four of them, and we knew to buy our tickets from a store underground where we got off the metro. Unfortunately, the guidebooks didn’t tell us how to get to the magic entrances for those “with tickets” to avoid the lines. We looked, I cursed, we looked some more, and covered a lot of territory. Never did locate those entrances, but when we gave up and headed for the pyramid entrance (which ALL guides said to avoid), lo and behold there was a special corridor set off by theater ropes, virtually unmarked save for a tiny sign, that said, “Avec billets.” Well, all righty. We swaggered past the unwashed thousands and waltzed right in. The underside of the pyramid is the huge central hall, from which you take off for the various wings of the museum.
Somehow, we managed to locate additional, upside down pyramids. I think Pei, the architect, had a thing for Egypt. Isn’t it handy that Loni has virtually the only red coat in all of Paris for easy spotting?
Once in, we snagged an English language map guide. Don’t leave start without it. The Louvre is HUGE and not all that intuitive for navigation. We got confused a number of times, even with the map. The French either have great signage, or really crappy, and the Louvre largely falls in the latter camp. Anyway, there are certain icons that you naturally gravitate to, and this was our first.
Man, we tourists look like supplicants seeking favor from the king. Nice to know they haven’t moved old Winged Victory in the 45 years since we last saw it. And something else hasn’t changed. The absolute mob scene around the Mona Lisa. I don’t know about you, but I think this is perhaps the most overrated piece of artwork in the world. It’s certainly a great work, but why does it get this kind of attention? Dozens, if not hundreds of other pieces are just as well executed, but this one gets all the glory. Mystifies me, but what do I know? This is only a small portion of the crowd. I had to wade my way in to this point through hundreds. Yeah, I know; why did I think I needed a shot of this thing? Irony is my middle name.
Rather than go from one iconic masterpiece to another, it was more fun just to stroll through and stop whenever something caught the eye for whatever reason. I must have a strange eye. These were three that I liked a lot. I loved the figures in the Robert; they had life, vitality, and the central character was the incarnation of insouciance. I don’t remember the artist, but the “Death of Elizabeth” was almost spooky. Man, she really does look like death warmed over. And who doesn’t like Delacroix’ “Liberty Leading The People?” You feel like breaking out into “La Marseillaise.” Although I have just a thumbnail of it here, it’s really a huge painting, roughly ten feet by twelve.
Even larger is the one that has Loni transfixed here, and easily her favorite. It’s the coronation of Napoleon, by Jacques David, finished in 1807, and it’s gigantic, about ten by six meters! Do the math. David depicts Nappy in the act of placing the crown on his own head. An egotistical schmuck, responsible for the death of millions.
All of this classical stuff is great, but there are tons of unsung items that we found compelling. Picture the museum as a giant “U” shape. At the very end of one of the very long arms, there’s an exhibit that’s hard to get to, as you have to go down some stairs and down another corridor, to an isolated, but large, display of the “Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.” Almost no one goes there because it’s so out of the way. We virtually had the place to ourselves, which was too bad because we thought it had by far some of the most interesting works. The sheer antiquity was mind boggling. The Mayan Bowl dates from the 7th to tenth centuries – how does something that delicate survive over a thousand years? God only knows how old the Easter Island statues are. By contrast, Canova’s Psyche and Cupid, which occupies a place of honor and resulting crowds in the main galleries above, was commissioned in only 1787.
For me, the best piece in the museum (whoa, WAY out on a limb here), was this carved head. It’s from Nigeria (!), and dates to between 200 and 400 B.C. I’m utterly fascinated by the bold style of the artist. Think of how flat and lifeless the Egyptian art was of the same period. The swoop of the brow just boggles me. Like I said, we just wandered until something grabbed one of us. This spoke to me.
But, wait, as they say, there’s more! It’s nice, once in a while, to see how the other half lives. An eye-popping wing of the museum houses the apartments of Napoleon III. Old Boney might have had to live out his years on St. Helena, but his progeny did all right for themselves. It’s all a matter of taste, but you gotta admit the place dazzles.
A flash would have been useless in a room this big, so these are not as sharp as I would like, having been taken with available light and my palsied hands. But you get the picture. Even the ceiling was a masterpiece.
I think this is supposed to represent Nap3 lording it over all, but not sure. They didn’t have any guides for these rooms. Some of the furnishings were incredible. I love the fact that the bedchambers were equipped with chairs surrounding the royal cot. Performances for the guests? I was surprised that the throne was as ordinary as it looks here. Just a plush chair. That marble table boggled the eyeballs. How did they do these things?
Our last stop was one of the two massive indoor sculpture plazas. Even with a wide angle lens, I can’t get the whole thing in the shot. Overhead is a glass roof for natural lighting.
Lots of naked guys in heroic fights and various states of distress, but I particularly liked the one of the man giving the child a drink while the dog licks her foot. It’s tone was so different from all the other statuary.
We’d finally had enough, and staggered out and caught our first glimpse of the Seine.
We certainly didn’t see everythingl at the Louvre, but we sampled an awful lot. The eyeballs were numb, as I suspect yours are by now as well. Well, feast them on the dinner Loni made that night, with dessert courtesy of our local patisserie. Ah, oui.
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