Voyage Toujours

What are you doing on Friday night? If you’re in Paris, why not visit the Louvre? The Louvre is open late two nights a week. The Louvre has 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. Take your time and wander through its the vastness of space and its history.

The museum is in a U shape with the Denon wing on the right, if you are facing the Pyramid entrance. The Denon wing houses the Mona Lisa, The Venus de Milo and the Nike of Samothrace to name a few. The Antiquities wing is housed in the Sully wing and the sculpture garden and Dutch works, some of my favorites, are housed in the Richelieu wing along with what was once Napoleon’s apartments. The center courtyard to this U shape is the Pyramid entrance or the I.M. Pei pyramid.

If you got rid of the crowds, you could get lost here. I don’t mean lost, as in you don’t know where you are, I mean lost in its grandeur. Don’t forget to look at the building itself. Every single space is occupied and that could get exhausting. I once spent just about 12 hours in a row here, and it wasn’t enough. Don’t let that scare you. If you are looking to see the “must sees”, you can do this in about an hour or so, if you know how to get there. Take a look at the map and plan your attack. But, if you have more than just a couple of hours, give her the time and respect that she’s due.