“Life offers you a thousand chances… all you have to do is take one.”
— Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
Sites/Topics covered in this post:
- The Louvre
- Street Scenes
Go-Date: Day 127, Wednesday, May 29
Lesson Learned: When you get overwhelmed, sit down and have a drink.
World’s Largest Museum
The Louvre is the world’s largest art museum. PERIOD! The place is massive. I mean, its fucking HUGE! When you enter, its so big you can’t even tell where the exhibit space begins on first glance. One thing off the bat that confuses me (as it did in Egypt) is why UNESCO doesn’t certify the museum itself as a World Heritage Site, nope they lump it in with everything else in this city. They do the same thing to Athens and to Cairo. These places have so many amazing sites they all deserve focus and attention.
Personally, I’d prefer multiple smaller museums dedicated to each type of collection. But, I will also say, the collections are belittled by the magnificence of the structure itself. The Louvre Palace is amazing.
The Louvre is an anchor for the central district in Paris. It’s so large you can probably see it from orbit. The Louvre is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city’s 1st arrondissement (Air-O-dis-eh-ma). There are about 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited in the museum, which if they counted like Pere Lachaise cemetery they would say from 20,000 to 45,000 objects.
The museum display space is over 72,735 square meters (782,910 square feet). In 2018, the Louvre was the world’s most visited art museum, receiving 10.2 million visitors. OK, so lets think about that. That means there are a bunch every day. Hmmmm, they are closed 1 day a week, that’s 52 days a year, and they are closed on Christmas, so that’s 53. They may close other days, but I’m not going to research that deeply. 365 minus 53 = 312. 10,200,000 divided by 312 = 32,692. Well we know that’s not a balanced number, but so what. The museum is open from 9:00 to 6:00 4 days a week and add 3:45 two days, so let’s just say its open 10 hours a day. So 3,269 people flow through the door every hour its open. That’s 54.5 people every minute. And they are all headed for the Mona Lisa!
The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as the Louvre castle in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum, but you’ll never see that, because you aren’t even going to see all the art hanging on the walls.
Due to the urban expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and, in 1546, was converted by Francis I into the main residence of the French Kings. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation’s masterpieces.
More about old Louie. It is said the Louvre was so large that he rode a horse from his bedroom to the dining room. I don’t mean he went outside to straddle the steed, he jumped out of bed in his jammies and trotted on down to the cafeteria to have brunch because it was so damned far. I suppose a maid followed along behind the horse with a broom and dustpan. That is totally ridiculous, didn’t he ever hear of moving sidewalks?
The museum opened in 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings which must have been heavy because of structural problems the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The art collections are divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings. Everything else never makes it out of the basement.
Under Napoleon I, a northern wing paralleling the Grande Galerie was begun, and the collection grew through successful military campaigns. Of course, everyone knows it’s good to be king.
One of the most important discoveries made during Napoleon’s reign came from the campaign in Egypt with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. It was found in 1799, and eventually led to the ability to decipher ancient hieroglyphs. Although the Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French, it actually never made it to the Louvre Museum. It was seized by British Forces following the defeat of Napoleon in Egypt and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. It is now on display at the British Museum. This really pisses off the Egyptians.
In 1983, French President François Mitterrand proposed, as one of his Grands Projets, the Grand Louvre Plan to renovate the building and relocate the Finance Ministry, allowing displays throughout the building. Architect I. M. Pei was awarded the project and proposed a glass pyramid to stand over a new entrance in the main court. The pyramid and its underground lobby were inaugurated on 15 October 1988 and the Louvre Pyramid was completed in 1989. People here either love it or hate it. I don’t think it fits, but it does allow massive amounts of daylight into the bowels of the museum.
The painting collection of the Louvre has more than 7,500 worksfrom the 13th century to 1848 and is managed by 12 curators who oversee the collection’s display. Nearly two-thirds are by French artists (5,000), and more than 1,200 are Northern European, 1,000 are Chinese, over 200 Japanese and Asian, 68 African, 13 Austrailian, 12 from South American, 6 from the South Pacific and one from America which is a used burger wrapper from McDonalds.
We spent about 3:45 minutes and 13 seconds in the museum and were exhausted. You could spend weeks in here and still not see everything. This place is even worse than the Egyptian Museum. Meaning that there are so many treasures here that you become numb. I walked past a Michelangelo painting like it was a 35 year-old Star Wars poster and my response when I saw it was “Yeah, I’ve seen that.” Its horrible. Almost every work of art in this place deserves your full attention and admiration. There is just too much to comprehend and appreciate. We were going to spend two days here, but will not (but then maybe we will if time permits). The crowds are too big, the collection is too big, our understanding is too small. We were impressed, we could go back, we should go back, we might go back, or maybe not.
Besides, I got lost and it took me half an hour to find the bathroom. Oh, and a Van Gogh was hanging over a urinal. There was a Picasso in the hall, but nobody noticed.