Day 8a: Treasure of the Louvre!

Our first morning alone navigating through Paris...and we did it! Up out of the subway and back out into the sun! It had been so nice having Mattieu & Audrey to lead us and not worrying a bit about finding our around. We still got to places - just a little more slowly 'cause I still kept stopping to take pictures! Then, I'd have to catch my bearings to continue on. It took us a few hours to get to the Louvre since we enjoyed a wonderful, leisurely Sunday morning walk on the way there.

- along the Seine River

I just LOVE the building fronts!

Here we are approaching the Louvre from the back. So we must walk several blocks-worth of Louvre building (on the right) before entering in at a side entrance. The Seine River is on the left.

Extra long buses!

And here we are at the side entrance - Musée du Louvre! - or the Louvre Museum!

(This view is looking head-on from the front entrance - I took this picture when the evening before when we went with Audrey & Mattieu.)

Inside the courtyards (the Louvre was a real castle to the Kings & Queens of France for many hundred years before it became a private museum, and then eventually became a public museum, growing to what it is today.)

30 words for the Louvre: Huge, majestic, vast, towering, enormous, massive, colossal, regal, grand, stately, imposing, magnificent, splendid, lofty, immense, imperial, impressive, striking, dignified, pompous, noble, daunting, commanding, glorious, royal, arresting, haughty, prominent, distinguished, renowned...and definitely inspiring - with all the words to describe it!!!

Larger than life statues all around the Louvre on the 2nd and 4th floors.

Fountains & the pyramid - made of glass and metal...673 glass pieces! The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the museum. It and the underground lobby was completed in 1989. The pyramid was created to better handle the number of visitors into the museum. Now, the entrance is in through the pyramid: down the stairs or escalator, walk over to whichever wing of the castle you desire to visit, and then head back up to the main floor. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago copied this technique to control the visitor entrance.

At the entrance...ready to head down underground and over to the castle walls.

Huge rooms filled with enormous paintings. We were not able to comprehend how the painters would have even fit thesse somewhere to paint them! They were just huge! (Sorry, I'm repeating my adjectives, but you just gotta go there to understand!!)

Here is a sample big picture...you can see it compared to the people looking at it.

Then, here it is in closer detail....a queen being crowned, I believe. The picture was more than lifesized.

We took many pictures from such painters as Gerigault, Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Mignon. I think I took a couple hundred pictures! It was so amazing to me to be there with all that history. History was one of my favorite subjects in school. And even though English & grammar were my other favorites, I cannot find the words to express how I felt walking through the Louvre and seeing all there was to see. These paintings were just right there....so close you could reach out and touch them.

And - of course - Leonardo Da Vinci!!!! This is his famous painting called "The Last Supper." Again, you can see how large the picture is! By this time, I was very excited to see Mona Lisa! :) I figured it must be so much bigger than what I had always thought.....

WoWow!!!! Imagine my surprise when we finally came upon the famous painting of Mona Lisa!!! It was so small compared to so many of the others! However, after my initial shock (and some disappointment, I must add), we got into the line to take a picture of it as close as we could get. It was the only painting in the whole museum (that we saw, anyway) which was in a glass case with guards monitoring and protecting it. It's small size begs one to wonder what exactly caused its great popularity??? Does anyone know? Anyway, despite it's size, we still enjoyed seeing it and stood there as long as we were allowed to (which wasn't long!)

Back out in another corridor, we found the other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci.

This one is named La Belle Ferronière and bears a resemblance to Mona Lisa, I thought.

Besides all the regular paintings, there were many, many other things we enjoyed while at the Louvre. There were -

- paintings & ornamentation on the walls and ceilings:

- artifacts of many different kinds:

- many ornate doors and huge doors (can't you just imagine the butlers or guards opening them with a bow???)

- great nooks & crannies and places to take fun pictures

- Couryards within the walls, filled with fountains and statues:

And here are a couple shots from inside to try to help show you the utter massiveness of the old castle. It is beyond comprehension to the American mind unless you've ever been to something similiar to one! Kendra and I were thinking that now we could fully understand how someone could be murdered and no one hear their cries, or that someone to be locked away and forgotten for years.

A funny side note: Kendra thought the Louvre would be a pretty uninteresting place for her, so she didn't think she'd enjoy it that much. She was just going since she knew how much I wanted to go. Much to her surprise and enjoyment, it turned out to be so much different than what she was expecting -not a regular old, boring museum! So much so that she was even interested in going to the "historical" part of the museum! It was great because a guide there went ahead and gave us a personal walk-through after we pestered him with so many questions! :) :)

This was the castle in 1200 - just 2 main corridors and then the last 2 walls to enclose the courtyard square.

By 1572, the castle had been enlarged and all 4 walls were part of the castle now. By 1610, a long corridor was being added on from the main castle. This next picture is of 1715 - where it shows the corridor walls continuing to be built down several blocks and then cutting across the extensive royal gardens. At this point, part of the city was now inside the "u" that the castle made. Plus you will notice a difference in the gardens.

By 1848, the castle walls were continuing to wrap back around and head back toward the main castle again...still with some of the town inside.

And by 1980, this is how the Louvre looked: by now, a museum. Rather than being in a rectangle shape, the walls were now in another long "U" shape, one wall having been torn down to allow direct access to the gardens.

And finally, 1989: the pyramid was added for the entrance to the Louvre. A couple of the courtyards were also covered (one of the ones covered was with the statues displayed in it.) This is how the Louvre looks today. The Mona Lisa is in the building to the right of the pyramid.

We stayed right up until the Louvre closed and we got booted out! I love their exit signs, don't you? Nice and green telling you to "Go!"

This is back at the pyramid again, underground and looking up before we took the steps back up to exit.

And finally, a night view of the Louvre...

The side entrance lit up where we headed out to the docks in search of a boat that we could ride on the Seine for a night cruise. So I've gotta start another post for those pics or this Day 8 will be way, way too long!!!