Vicarious Paris: One woman's candid account of moving to Paris, with insights on: food, nightlife, and living like a local

Having fun at the major landmarks (part 2)

Continuing on with the major landmarks, we'll climb the Notre-Dame Tower in this chapter, we'll go on a Seine river boat ride, but first let's visit the most famous museum in the world...

La Musée de Louvre

La Musée du Louvre (160 Rue de Rivoli, M1 Louvre-Rivoli) can be annoying or interesting, depending on your personal interests. If you don’t really care for museums, and are only going just to see the Mona Lisa in person, you’ll likely end up feeling pretty underwhelmed. Just imagine a room with at least fifty people jostling each other for a photo of the famous painting. Not to mention that your photo will look like garbage, since the painting is smaller than you’d ever expect, and locked behind a thick layer of glass. I will give it this: there is a haunting quality there, and it permeates its way through the glass. She’s definitely giving you “a look.” With all the surrounding noise and jostling, it won’t be easy to appreciate this haunting aspect, but if you’re able to block out the distractions for even a good five seconds, the Mona Lisa is worth your time.

Yes...the Mona Lisa is worth your time, but it alone is not quite worth the price of admission. Luckily there’s a lot more to see, and it isn’t all crowds and cameras. Well technically there’s so much to see that you’ll never see it all, so let me just focus on a few of my favourite aspects.

I arrived when the museum opened, on a free day no less, so people were already pouring in. The free day used to be the first Sunday of the month all year long, but as of this publication it’s only from October to March. For me it was the first Sunday of May, nine a.m., and an influx of visitors was heading straight for the Mona Lisa. I let them scurry away, and opted for the nearby hall of French sculptures. I arrived and it was totally devoid of visitors; I mean literally not one other person. It was a shame but also a gift, because the silence, the many windows letting in the morning rays of sun...pure bliss. You won’t find Rodin’s famous works, as he has a separate museum, but the sculptures here were impressive nonetheless, and it was the perfect heavenly way to begin my journey through the Louvre.

I’m not really good with museum maps, so aside from knowing the general hall I needed to get to, I was terrible at finding specific artwork. My deficiency served me well, as it resulted in gasps of delight when I encountered the Venus de Milo, and later on the famous Winged Victory statue.

There are also impressive sections on Ancient Greece and Rome; you’ve got your emperors like Augustus and Tiberius, you’ve got your Greek goddesses like Aphrodite and Athena, and they’ve all been carved in impressive dimensions, to evoke a real sense of awe.

As for my favourite area of all? Which any museum patron will enjoy?

The Hall of Italian Sculptures.

I have never seen so much gorgeousness and detail in one space; statue by statue you’ll be amazed, and you’ll even see some things that you recognize from books ( like “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”). I spent the second-most amount of time in the Hall of Italian Sculptures, and the most amount of time in...the Ancient Egypt section. This is a Romi-specific obsession, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll experience a sense of glee when you realize there are eighteen rooms at the Louvre dedicated solely to Ancient Egypt. From a tall likeness of the goddess Isis, to the Sitting Scribe sculpture you’ve seen in so many books, to the sun-worshipping pharaoh Akhenaten, to pages from the Book of the Dead, to sarcophagi as far as the eye can see...eighteen rooms, y’all!

On the level of pure visual admiration, the ceiling work in the Galerie D’Apollon is quite impressive, as well as the Hall of Italian paintings which seems to go on for miles. It’s here that you’ll find the room with the Mona Lisa, but let the other visitors deal with that while you browse the Italian paintings, many of them religious and gruesome, decapitations and all (don’t judge me for finding this fascinating; it’s art).