Paris, Day 4

Eight-thirty AM found A and I in line in front of the Louvre.  I'm so glad A had us get there early because there was already a fair-sized line when we arrived.  Our tickets were for 9 AM, opening time.  When it opened, we filed through the door into the glass pyramid.  We passed through a security check before descending an escalator into the foyer.  The foyer, if it can be called that, was huge: creamy marble floors and a roof made of the glass pyramid we'd just entered.  We looked around, a bit dazed, not sure where to go.  People were already scattering around us, going every which way.  We ended up finding the Information Desk, getting maps, and then deciding to go to the Richelieu wing first.

The Louvre was formerly a palace, and it has three main buildings: Richelieu, Denon, and Sully.  Each building's design and architecture is beautiful as well as the art it contains.  Ceilings bore ornate moldings, rooms opened up into indoor balconies looking down on an inner courtyard, large windows looked out on the outer courtyard where the glass pyramids sat and people lined up to get in.

Each building has about five floors.  Each floor is full of art.  People say you can spend a month in the Louvre.  I'd like to add to that and say you can spend a month in the Louvre and still not see everything.  They have that much stuff.  We couldn't spend a month in the Louvre, so we opted to spend a day.  We entered at 9 AM and left about ten minutes before 6 PM, which is closing time, so that was about nine hours in the Louvre.

We went to the classical painting section first.  We had a few specific art pieces we wanted to see, but there was no hurry, so we ambled along room to room, not keeping track of where we were on the map.  The paintings were all sizes, but most of them were large.  Like couch-size large.  There were paintings depicting landscapes, portraits, scenes from the Bible, from history, from the lives of Catholic saints, from the everyday lives of the artists.  I could tell there was so much history I didn't know in and through every piece of art.

We eventually wandered out of the painting section and into the furniture section.  Several rooms had been reconstructed to look just like a royal parlor or drawing room from the 1700s or 1800s.  We wandered into the sculpture and statuary section.  Then from there to objets d'arts.  Then from there back to more paintings.  We saw so much stuff.  I was surrounded by a dizzying display of paintings, sculptures, historical objects, utensils, furniture, jewelry, and grandeur.

Venus de Milo

My pictures don't show it completely, but the Louvre was jampacked with people.  Well, in the morning when we first entered, it wasn't as busy, but by noon it was overflowing with people.  The lunch line at the cafe was crazy.  And when A and I went to see the especially famous pieces -  Venus, Mona Lisa, Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, The Winged Victory - the crowd beecame absolutely suffocating.  I've heard that some people make a trip to the Louvre just to see a specific work, like the Mona Lisa.  I'm glad I didn't go for that reason because the closest I got to the Mona Lisa was ten feet away.  Still, I got to see the Mona Lisa in person.  She looked oddly peaceful amidst all the people jostling and shoving to get a look at her.  I'm still curious to know why certain statues are so popular though.  I saw tons of beautiful Greek-style statues.  Why are Venus, The Winged Victory, and Psyche so special?

A gorgeous hall covered in gold-framed paintings

One word I would use to dsecribe the Louvre is gigantic.  Honestly, it was a little too gigantic, I think.  Its size and the vast amounts of art it contained were overwhelming.  However, it was interesting to spend a day there.