Two nights a week, the world famous Musée du Louvre is open until 9:45pm. I finally decided to check it out last night, Friday. I’ve been here almost 3 months and though I have been nearby, I went to the Apple Store in the Carousel du Louvre when I first got here to buy an extra Euro plug, this was my first time this visit in the Louvre. I arrived about 5:30pm and spent a lovely 3 hours in, what for the Louvre, was a pretty empty museum. I recommend trying it when it’s not so crowded as was the case this time. The Louvre is also open late night on Wednesdays. A lot of the museums in town pick at least one night a week where they are open late. The Orsay is open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that may be my next stop. I highly recommend going when your favorite place is open late. I was able to roll over to the Mona Lisa and my favorite painting in the world has returned, the Last Martyr! That’s the photo of the drowning girl below. It’s hauntingly beautiful and peaceful. I was so happy when I saw they had brought it back out. It is not in the exact same spot as before but it’s still in the French realism section. Last time I came to the Louvre, it was gone and I asked a couple of the people that work there and they had said it was out to be restored or just stored. They weren’t sure. The Last Martyr happens to be not far from Mona and other Leonardo Da Vinci masterpieces. I admire Leo more for his genius in other fields, but here we see his science in his paintings. The Madonna of the Rocks, made a little more famous by the Da Vinci Code, as well as his St. John the Baptist are all in the Denon wing of the Louvre. The Louvre is also composed of the Sully and Richelieu wings. The Richelieu wing has a large sculpture garden as well as Napoleon’s apartments and, my favorite in this wing, the Dutch and Northern European School of art. Amongst the Dutch greats are Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. The Sully Wing is where you’ll find the antiquities and the old medieval wing of the original Louvre fortress walls. 15,000 people a day, approximately, visit the Louvre and it’s approximately 35,000 works of art on display. They have more than 380,000 works stored there, so they are only displaying about 10% of the best of what they have in over 650,000 sq ft. of space. The most visited work of art is the Mona Lisa but it’s ridiculous to come here just to see her, in what is my opinion, not one of my favorite Leonardo works of art. The museum/palace/fortress, is a gorgeous architectural space and the variety of works from Cycladic art dating from 3,5000 B.C. to the 19th century paintings are extraordinary. On Friday night, I had no wait to purchase my ticket from the machines, no wait to drop my coat off at the coat check and no wait to get into the different wings. I was able to get up close to the Mona Lisa and wander through the museum, with some classical music playing on my iTouch, I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. I hope the Orsay will be just as pleasing next week.
Voyage Toujours 
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