13 September 2015 / leggypeggy

Planning to visit the Louvre? Take stilts

art, art galleries, artworks, cameras, crowds, Egyptian art, furniture, guidebook, Louvre, Middle Eastern art, Mona Lisa, museums, Paris, sculptures, travel, Venus de Milo

Where’s the Mona Lisa?

Oh there she is!

Just about every visitor to Paris will manage to squeeze in a visit to that famous art gallery–museum, the Louvre. In fact, it is the most visited museum in the world with about 15,000 guests per day. Poor John and I were a paltry two of them.

We joined the queue, which wasn’t too long, about 2:30pm because Poor John’s guidebook said admission was half-price after 3pm. You can imagine the ticket seller rolling her eyes when she laughed and said ‘that deal ended years ago’.

I checked his guidebook, purchased secondhand a couple of weeks ago in Australia—copyright 1994. Duh! So we agreed then that history might not have changed, but the particulars of open hours and admission prices probably have.

Plenty of visitors

Almost a stampede

You get a clear view of the ceilings

But as soon as you enter the museum itself you are confronted with the other 14,998 visitors who decided to come that day. And they all have cameras, tablets or mobile phones.

It’s a good thing I didn’t come expecting a close-up view of the museum’s two most popular exhibits—Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. You can barely see them for all the arms holding cameras aloft. Luckily, I had a reasonable view of these gals about 12 years ago and an even better one in the 1970s. So if you want a good view now, take your stilts.

Venus de Milo still has her legs, but you wouldn’t know it

But there are plenty of other gems to see. I’ve been told that some people come in just to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo and then leave. Woo-hoo! Good riddance.

So on to some of the other exhibits. The museum holds about 380,000 items, with about 35,000 on display at any one time. Works date from the extremely distant past to the 21st century, and include just about any kind of work you can think of.

Mosaic of the Seasons

We have a copy of this Egyptian hippo

Egyptian scribe

Egyptian tomb art

Four cats

Spoon

Another spoon

Sarcophagus Ramses III

Sarcophagus Djedhor

Poor John and I headed to the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo first, just to say we’d tried, and then moved on to enjoy some other treats. Having lived in the Middle East for quite a few years, we lingered at some relevant works.

We also sought out the furniture displays that show how the Louvre (it used to be a palace) might have been furnished.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures. Too crowded to get many good shots of displays, and just crowded enough to get good shots of people. Lots of people. Don’t forget your stilts.

And if you’re tired and hungry after all this sightseeing, try a restorative French dish of salade niçoise on my cooking blog.