Oh my goodness, the Louvre! The greatest museum in the world. It would take days to go through it all, so we didn't even try, just strolled through a few parts.
The Louvre used to be a palace. In its courtyard now sits its main entrance, a modern glass pyramid designed by American architect I.M. Pei. The pyramid was completed in 1989, the year Noah was born.
Inside the glass pyramid.
Seen in person, the Mona Lisa ("La Gioconda") seems rather small after you're seen her image a million times in books, ads and on the Internets. But the heavily guarded 1504 masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Louvre's Denon wing, is still awe-inspiring.
Even the area around the Mona Lisa wasn't that crowded. The moral of the story, again -- November is the best travel month!
Noah in the Italian painting gallery. He liked this one, "Temptation of Christ" by Ary Scheffer, 1854, which depicts Jesus and the devil duking it out.
"Chopin at 28," painted in 1838 by Eugene Delacroix, looks just like Bob Dylan! Noah tries to look like them both.
Venus de Milo, a Greek masterpiece created between 130 and 100 B.C. It was found in 1820 on the Greek island of Milos.
Noah and
"Antinoüs d'Écouen," artist unknown, circa 117-138.
Noah and
"Portrait d'un philosophe cynique," artist unknown, circa 175-200.
The Winged Victory, a second-century-B.C. sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory). It's stunning up close -- the folds of her robe seem to actually be drifting in the wind, though they're stone, of course. Again, there were no crowds -- we could get right up close to things and ponder them.
The Winged Victory, up close.
The Ferris wheel in the Place de la Concorde, west of the Jardin des Tuileries, which is just west of the Louvre. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre and hundreds of others lost their heads to the guillotine in this public square. Here's a note for Noah: In "Star Trek," the Place de la Concorde is the location of the office of the president of the United Federation of Planets.
Paris has had to come to terms with its painful World War II history, when many people cooperated with the Nazi occupiers and its Vichy puppets. Thousands of French Jews were deported and killed. On the other hand, there was the Resistance. France reveres its Resistance heroes, many of them martyred. The remains of a few rest just outside the Louvre, and fresh flowers are laid there daily by French citizens.
Three lesser-known statues outside the Louvre at night -- Chris Welsch, Noah and me!
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