Ilir and I decided to go the Louvre on the first sunday of the month, as it was free that day. I got up a 6am, got ready, and headed over. I was fairly early, I arrived just before 8am and there were like 5 ppl in line waiting for the doors to open, so I walked around and took some pictures to kill the time. Paris is awesome early in the morning, the city is completely empty and the light is great, although on this particular day it was cold as hell:
By the time the doors had opened, it was 9am, and the line was long enough to wrap around the pyramid (probably several hundred people), but Ilir and I finally got inside. The Pyramid is the center of the museum, from which there are entrances to the various exhibits:
If you look closely you can see what looks like a guy taking a picture of me as I take a picture of him (note: all pictures taken w/ a Sigma 21mm..I love wide angle)
Le Louvre has a lot of art, I would even dare to say, it has too much art. Walk through the halls of this museum and you will notice that every corner and wall has some piece of art on it, it's so saturated that it's almost impossible to consider each piece for anything more than a couple of seconds. Paintings are stacked on top of each on the walls, so that one's attention is diffused over the entire gallery rather than piece by piece:
The disappointing thing was that this hallway was the only place in the museum with natural light (which pretty much limited my interior photos to this one place). The Mona Lisa was the big draw of course, it didn't seem that large of a painting, but there are definitely some strange things going if you look closely enough (the dark figure to the left of Mona lisa, the faint number "6" on the top left...Ilir and I have a couple of conspiracy theories but I won't go into those ;) )
Actually the most enjoyable painting was Veronese's "Marriage at Cana" which is probably the largest painting I've ever seen (the characters are quite interesting, several of which stare at the viewer which is uncharacteristic for a renaissance painting). It stands right across from the Mona Lisa, it's as big as a house, but nobody pays it any attention...
This hallway had the best paintings in the museum (tech note: this is where a polarizing filter would be handy, it would eliminate the reflection coming off the painting allowing the viewer to see the details in the painting):
It was a lot of fun, even if you're not into paintings/sculptures/archeology/etc. it's still a great place to see if just for it's amazing architecture (although in all honesty it would take a week to see everything...)
If you look closely you can see what looks like a guy taking a picture of me as I take a picture of him (note: all pictures taken w/ a Sigma 21mm..I love wide angle)
Le Louvre has a lot of art, I would even dare to say, it has too much art. Walk through the halls of this museum and you will notice that every corner and wall has some piece of art on it, it's so saturated that it's almost impossible to consider each piece for anything more than a couple of seconds. Paintings are stacked on top of each on the walls, so that one's attention is diffused over the entire gallery rather than piece by piece:
The disappointing thing was that this hallway was the only place in the museum with natural light (which pretty much limited my interior photos to this one place). The Mona Lisa was the big draw of course, it didn't seem that large of a painting, but there are definitely some strange things going if you look closely enough (the dark figure to the left of Mona lisa, the faint number "6" on the top left...Ilir and I have a couple of conspiracy theories but I won't go into those ;) )
Actually the most enjoyable painting was Veronese's "Marriage at Cana" which is probably the largest painting I've ever seen (the characters are quite interesting, several of which stare at the viewer which is uncharacteristic for a renaissance painting). It stands right across from the Mona Lisa, it's as big as a house, but nobody pays it any attention...
This hallway had the best paintings in the museum (tech note: this is where a polarizing filter would be handy, it would eliminate the reflection coming off the painting allowing the viewer to see the details in the painting):
It was a lot of fun, even if you're not into paintings/sculptures/archeology/etc. it's still a great place to see if just for it's amazing architecture (although in all honesty it would take a week to see everything...)
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