The Lourve

The Louvre was huge! It wrapped around a whole city block and had levels below and above ground. I had no idea that much of the art was actually kept below ground; but I guess it makes sense because it is safer there. It took us a good twenty minutes to figure out how to get inside because the building above ground did not seem to have an entrances open. We found out that you actually have to go in by going down into the large glass pyramid. Once inside we got a map and headed off to the exhibit with the great masters like Leonardo Da Vinci among many others. They did not allow the use of camera's in this particular exhibit because the color of the oil paintings can be damaged by camera flashes. It was amazing the number of pieces and the size of some of them stretched the entire height of the wall. There were thick cables suspended from the ceiling which held the large paintings in place on the wall. I can't imagine how much they must have weighed. The Mona Lisa was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Probably because they always show it up close. on the solitary wall it hung encased behind glass all by itself with a rope surrounding it to keep people from getting too close. What a spectacle. The statue portion of the museum was also substantial in size and many of the works were missing their arms or hands where they had fallen off over time. There was one exhibit that had several individual statues each holding a clock with a different time zone. It was my understanding that this was a temporary exhibit, but interesting none the less. We only spent about 3 hours at the Louvre ad saw only a small fraction of teh pieces there. They say it can take weeks to see the whole museum.