Paris, day 2 - the Louvre

The view under the pyramid is a curious mix of old and new.

The Louvre is the biggest museum in the world with more than 35,000 works on display. Obviously you can’t see everything, so we had a confab and decided to visit the really famous pieces. On the way, we saw the original 12th-century foundations of the building, then the Egyptian area:

Plus some rather lovely ceilings.

The Venus de Milo (very strange to walk along and suddenly think, hang on, I recognise that sculpture…).

La Joconde (which was bigger than I expected, and they’ve organised the area very sensibly and given it a lot of viewing space, as it’s the most popular exhibit).

Art students copying paintings:

A rather nice sculpture of Diana.

And a gorgeous painting of the Northern Lights by François Biard.

I had also wanted to see a certain painting by Hippolyte Flandrin (Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer), but couldn’t find it. I asked one of the curators, who was the only unhelpful person I met in Paris, and was aided by a really lovely man who translated for me because he could see I was struggling – and she still shrugged and said she had no idea what I was talking about! Um, the painting was on coasters and the like in the museum shop, so it’s not exactly obscure!). A bit more trawling the galleries, and we discovered that it was on loan. Tant pis…

There was a fab view of the courtyard from the top floor.

Then we went further down to see the other bit of the glass pyramid.

There were rainbow patterns everywhere… and they show up very well on dark hair.