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Published: July 28th 2013
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Having known Louvre is one of the biggest museums in Paris, we decided to start early. We got up at 7 o’clock, had breakfast at 7:30, and left the hotel at 9 o’clock. There were already loads of people around the station and Pyramids entry.
We managed to start looking round the Louvre at 9:45. We had planned looking at the most famous picture, i.e. portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Gioconda known as Mona Lisa. The famous portrait seems to have been moved from the old place to the room 6 of the first floor of Denon Wing. As expected, there was a huge crowds around the Mona Lisa’s painting. It was a relatively small portrait and was protected by doubled glaze windows. One of the most famous pictures in the world made Louvre extremely popular and it is said that nearly 100 % of the visitors look at the Mona Lisa’s paintings. Approximately four in five people around the painting were taking photos or videos, and some of them were even taking the photos with the painting.
As well as Mona Lisa’s painting, there were an wealth of famous masterpieces in the Italian Gallery.
Unlike Orsay Museum or Musee del O’langerie, visitors were allowed to take photos as long as they didn’t use flash. Thus, there were quite a few people gathering around the famous masterpieces, e.g. “The Virgin and Child with St Anne” by Leonard da Vinci, “Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist” by Raphael, “The wedding feast at Cana” by Paold Cliari, “The depth of the Virgin” by Michalangelo. The history of Italian paintings date back from the 13
th century. Some of the old paintings were executed on the triptych or altarpieces, and contain the mythological characters, e.g. Virgin, Christ, angels, John, Madeleine, Venus, etc. We saw various tempera or fresco paintings by Simone Martini, Fra Angelico, Uccello or Botticelli, Perugino.
The multilingual maps give the highlights of paintings, sculptures, and exhibitions rooms. As well as Mona Lisa’s paintings, we saw loads of historic paintings like “Coronation of Napoleon I in Notre Dame” , “Liberty guiding people on 28 July 1830”,” the raft of Medusa”.
My father’s digital camera’s battery was running out, and my mother suggested going to the camera shop to get the battery, and going to the lunch in the same
café, which we went on Saturday. They had to pay €4 for getting battery for the camera, and were asked to return to the shop one hour later.
We collected the camera from the camera shop, and returned to Louvre Museum. My mother was interested in Vermeer’s painting and Dutch paintings. We went to the top floor of Richelieu Wing. We looked at various French paintings including “Gabrielle d’Estee” and “one of her sisters in the bath”, “The cheat with the ace of diamonds”, a number of excellent paintings by Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorrain. We then went on to the gallery rooms of Northern paintings. The collections of the Northern paintings included “The Virgin at home Chancellor Rolin” by Jan Van Eyck, “Charles I, King of England, at the hunt” by Antony Van Dyck, “The landing at Marseilles” by Peter Paul Rubens, scores of great works by Rembrandt and a handful paintings by Johannes Vermeer.
We didn’t know that Paris had had an wealth of sculptures, statues, and busts over the centuries. We saw a number of marble sculptures and statues, which include mythological nudes and funerary monuments, most of which came from the
royal palaces like Versailles, Churches, and gardens of the manor houses.
Finally, we went to the gallery rooms for near Eastern Antiquities. We saw the remarkable monument of the code of Hammurabi, sovereign of Babylon, and admired the reconstruction of the Khorsabad courtyard, with its winged man-headed bulls representing the glory of Assyrian king Sargon II.
There were various types of books, some English fictions and non-fictions related to French history and revolution, and a wide variety of accessories and stationery items, and clothes sold in the shops.
There were a wide variety of cafes and restaurants around our hotel. However, quite a few restaurants showed menus in French and it took a while for us to work what it was. One of the Turkish restaurants showed pictures of each dish and it made us easier to identify the dishes. We therefore tried Turkish restaurant. Most of the dishes were similar to kebab meat dishes in London and had grilled meats, rice, and salad. We ordered a red wine to go with meat dishes.
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