I’m leaving this here as a reminder to my future self.
One month before any trip to the Louvre: join Amis du Louvre (Adhérent) to get a membership for however many adults are in your household (kids are free). The cards will be mailed out and then you can skip the lines at the Pyramid and other places. You might be able to talk your way in from the Passage Richelieu or Carrousel (underground mall) entrance if you say that you’re going to buy a membership. With the membership, you don’t need to get a timed ticket and then wait in line for 30 minutes to use that time slot.
Once in the Pyramid, skip the Nintendo-based audioguides, which are complex and confusing (and the commentary is limited to a handful of works and isn’t very interesting).
Enter via Richelieu and the French sculptures, especially the Barye animal fights.
Upstairs to Napoleon III’s lavish crib.
Upstairs again to the two Vermeers (one was in Abu Dhabi; one here). Here’s how much demand there was at 1 pm on a weekday to see a painting not called “Mona Lisa”:
Then the huge Rubens salon and walk through French painting to see if the battle scenes catch their eye.
Finally to the Mona Lisa room, which should be revisited on a Friday night around 9 pm if anyone actually wants to see the painting. Note the surgical mask as protection against aerosol viruses in the most crowded room of the world’s most visited art museum (at least 15,000 visitors per day). Fortunately, the ventilation system was upgraded in the 50s… the 1850s.
A mostly-European crowd in which we see reliance on masks, typically mere surgical or cloth ones:
In other kid news, ours enjoyed this stinky cheese from the supermarket:
Guess Greenspun wasn’t photographing the Mona Lisa. It must be pretty thrashed from the humidity. The commuter busses still require masks in Calif*.
Last time we went (2021-08-25) was through the “Porte des Lions”, a side entrance near the Tuileries garden and our car park exit. No lines and we got in almost instantly with our prebooked ticket.
One delightful museum I visited with my 10 year-old daughter this year is the Magic Museum in the medieval Marais district. They have classes (kids only) followed by a guided tour of the museum and a magic show for a mere 35 euros.
Musee D’Orsay is a better experience (prettier, better art, less crowds) than the Louvre, and you can actually see it all in one visit.
Is not it a bit of an apples to oranges comparison ? Orsay is an [post]impressionist museum primarily.
Besides, de gustibus non est disputandum, no ?
I’m surprised they don’t do more to clean the building exteriors. They’re drab and ugly!
A few guys with some pressure washers could make them gleam inside a week. They’re filthy! Where does all the money go??
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/
BTW I think it would be great if Jimmy Kimmel ran a “man on the street” segment and asked the average College Educated American where the Mona Lisa currently resides and who painted it. I don’t understand patronizing the museum when so many people in this country couldn’t answer those questions if their lives depended on it.
The stinky cheese your kids enjoyed is the best part of the trip. France doesn’t give a rat f**k about Western culture any longer, and the only people who do care are the ones who have the money to buy the remnants at auction.
The exterior cut stone of the Louvre probably would not have survived five centuries if power washing was regularly used.
Why do you want to care about things that the average man interviewed on television can accurately answer questions about ?