Paris - The Louvre

The Louvre -- one of the world's most popular art museums with over 35,000 exhibits in 15 acres of space.  It began life as a fortress in the 12th century, was used as a palace in the 14th century and finally became a public museum in the late 1700's. 

This is definitely not a museum where you read every information tag.  You don't even have time to look at every exhibit.  So we each chose 2 items that we wanted to see and after that we selected galleries to walk through.   The strategy worked well; we saw great art, saw a lot of the Louvre, but we're not so sick of it that we don't want to go back.   It would be easy to spend several days there.

There were long lines to enter through the pyramid.  Kate's plan avoided that; we entered through the Carousel and bought tickets at the kiosk.  Both were big time savers.  Good job Kate. 

The building exterior was beautiful.

Part of the interior courtyard

The most popular exhibit - de Vinci's Mona Lisa.  This photo is almost actual size (not really).  It's only 20" x 30". 

And this is the crowd of people to see the Mona Lisa

On the wall opposite the Mona Lisa is a much more impressive painting, in size at least.  The Wedding Feast at Cana by Veronese.  After painting this, he was summoned by the Pope to explain why drunken revelers were in a holy scene. 

I wonder if the Pope noticed the cat playing in the bottom right hand corner of the painting.

Aphrodite, better known as Venus de Milo. Believed to have been sculpted in 100 BC it wasn't "discovered" until the 1800's on the Greek island of Milo.

Looks like Venus may have originated "sagging"

Flying Mercury....just like the FTD Florist symbol

One of Michelangelo's Two Slaves statues.  Supposedly this body position is very uncomfortable, perhaps to show this person's torment. 

This is not a photographic trick; the painting is actually this large.  And there are many painting this size. 

Decorated ceiling

The Coronation of Napoleon -- we saw the other copy at Versailles.

Now that's a chandelier

Napoleon III kept apartments at the Louvre.  Here's his dining room. 

Like all fine museums, the Louvre has a nice collection of paintings from the Dutch masters.  Here is Jan Vermeer's The Lacemaker.

The view of the Louvre through the Pyramid. 

There was a nice market street on our way to the Louvre

The fruit at this stand was beautiful

The fish stand.

Paris Opera House -- we didn't see any Phantom's walking around.