Treks and travels: Louvre Museum, Paris

Our first place of visit in Paris was Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre). A fortress built in 12th century; it is now the largest and most visited Museum in the world. It is so large that if you spend a minute in front of each collection, it would take four months to see the entire Museum!! Its collection includes the most popular painting “Mona Lisa” from Leonardo Da Vinci.

There is a direct entry to the Museum that brings us to the glass Pyramid, the entrance of the Museum. We brought our tickets here (10 Euros) and started our “long” walk into the Museum. Since it was difficult to cover the entire Museum, we decided to first start with the ones which we thought were important. We were particularly interested in the paintings, Greece and Roman antiques.

The collection is simply amazing, especially the paintings. Hundreds of paintings decorated the walls of a long corridor. Most of the paintings were depicting the life during Jesus Christ. With very little knowledge about European history and Christianity, I found them difficult to understand. The explanations in French didn’t help me either (Audio guides in different languages are available. But I always prefer to read).

Since its inception, there has been lot of revolutions and wars in Europe. It would have been a daunting task for the people to safeguard these precious elements. Even now, the paintings look like “just completed”.

I personally liked “Last Supper” painting. It is the largest painting in Louvre and covers the entire wall on one side. This is from Italian painter Paolo Veronese. (The one from Leonardo Da Vinci is in Milan, Italy). It took quite some time for me to get the complete painting in my camera. I do not know how the painter managed to draw such a huge one.

In front of “Last Supper”, a massive crowd was formed. Wondering what people doing there, I peeped in. It was the “Mona Lisa” painting. I must admit that my initial reaction was a disappointment. After seeing the extra ordinary large painting of “Last Supper”, Mona Lisa looked extremely small (In fact it is small). But people are fascinated by this painting. Everyone wanted to take a snap of theirs with the painting in the background. Considering the popularity of the painting, it is well secured inside glass.

After paintings, we moved to Roman and Greek sections. Below is the sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss.

The walk was tiring and we took few breaks in between. The restaurants inside the Museum were extremely expensive and we decided to have food later. At one point of time, we lost track of where we were moving!! The collections seemed to never end. Later, we also realized that we were just trudging without any aim. We had seen enough of the Museum and decided to move out. Completely exhausted, we sat next to the fountain enjoying the cool breeze outside.

It was time for late lunch and I could only get a salad in McDonald’s. All my efforts to get a burger with “meat” removed failed as the girl in the counter could not understand my logic. A coke and a few pieces of vegetables were the only ones available for me and I was grateful for that!!