Okay y’all.
We did the Eiffel Tower.
We did Notre-Dame
We did Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. Things happened there.
We did Sainte-Chapelle.
We did some other stuff too.
But now it’s time for the most formidable of them all… the protein-packed power punch of culture, history, and Parisian pride…
I’m talking of course, about The Louvre Museum, and its crowning jewel, the Mona goddamn Lisa.
I’m trying a new intro format/persona. Today you get “Hype-Man-Peter”!
Don’t get used to him. 😂
An Intro to the Louvre Museum
Located on the right (north) bank of the Seine in the center of Paris, the Louvre is, perhaps, the most famous museum on planet earth. But it didn’t always serve this function. Originally, when it was originally constructed all the way back in 1100s, it was actually a fortress. I mean a true Medieval castle, like you see in the movies, complete with turrets and a big moat around it. Eventually, as the urban footprint of Paris began to expand, this castle transitioned from a military installation to a palace for the French royals. I am really resisting the urge to jump down a history worm-hole here, so but to summarize centuries of history into a a few lines… the physical structure that was this castle was altered many times for many reasons through history. In the late 1600s, when King Louis XIV relocated to the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre was repurposed to house his extensive art collection… and things have evolved from there. It was first opened to the public in 1793 with a mere 537 paintings, and that number has since grown to include a breath-taking 500,000 objects, which collectively attract almost 9 million visitors per year, making it the most visited museum in the world.
And the castle that once stood here is not completely gone! You can see the base-layer of the outer walls of this castle still intact, exactly where they had originally stood within the museum.
Meanwhile, the famous glass pyramid that sits atop the entrance to this museum was actually only added in 1989! It’s barely older than I am. Here are a few shots from the entrance to the Louvre…
Once you arrive at “ground zero,” immediately below this glass pyramid, it immediately becomes clear that you are in for a LONG day. I actually don’t think it would even be possible to see everything contained in this museum in a single day. You could explore this place for weeks. It’s similar to British Museum in that way.
And—I don’t want to sound condescending here—I have been quite lucky to have been able to travel as much as I have… but this is definitely a location that will receive the lowest common denominator of tourist. In the line to get in, a physical fight almost broke out between American and Russian tourists. Apparently the Americans thought the Russians were trying to cut the line. 🙄 It was all very unnecessary, but it did help to set expectations at the beginning of this odyssey. This place in incredible, but it’s extremely crowded, and everybody in here thinks that every other person is in their way. I find these sorts of situations unpleasant, as you may have already surmised. But it’s the Louvre! We must persevere.
So as to keep this article reasonably contained, I’m going to just show you a smattering of the most interesting photographs I took, spanning time and space within this museum. The first two shots in here are the aforementioned walls of the Medieval castle that once stood here. The next 3 are of a model of the Louvre grounds that really fascinated me for some reason. And after that, it’s all the most interesting pieces that I saw during my visit, plus a few shots of the Louvre’s stunning main halls.
Almost as stunning as the collection of art, artifacts, and antiquities contained within the Louvre, is the Louvre itself. This incredible building circles the main square with the glass pyramid in sort of a horseshoe shape, and everywhere you go in the museum, you are looking out into this square. The view is really quite incredible. The modern skyline you see in the distance in the final pictures here is an area called La Défense, which a major business district northwest of the city, just outside the boundaries of the main 20 arrondissements of Paris. We’re actually going to be visiting this area in the next article!
VENUS DE MILO
Now let’s look at a couple of the most famous pieces in the Louvre. The first one that I will highlight—which I remember being at least vaguely aware of since I was a small child—is Venus de Milo. This statue was rediscovered in the early 1800s on the Greek island of Milos, and its subject is believed to be Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Standing at 204 cm tall (6 feet 8 inches), the statue is made of pure marble, and is estimated to have been sculpted sometime in in the Hellenistic era (the middle of the 2nd century B.C.)—perhaps in the 160-110 B.C. ballpark. Going back that far in time, we get a bit fuzzy on exactly who the artists were responsible for these incredible antiquities, but the best guess as to who the sculptor is here is a guy called Alexandros of Antioch. He’s also credited with a sculpture of Alexander the Great which is also housed here at the Louvre.
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Next up is another masterpiece from the Hellenistic era of Ancient Greece, which is thought to be slightly older even than Venus de Milo! The approximate date the statue known as Winged Victory of Samothrace is around 190 B.C. Samothrace is the name of the island in the Aegean Sea where this relic was recovered. It was clearly once part of a much bigger figure, but parts of it broke off somewhere through the passage of time. In fact, when it was originally discovered in the 1860s, it was in pieces. Those pieces were sent back to Paris and re-assembled into the figure you see pictured below. Even still, this headless figure stands at 5.57 meters tall (or 18 feet 3 inches). Now sitting center stage at the top of the stairs in the main hall of the Louvre, this statue is thought to represent the Greek goddess Niké.
The Mona Lisa
Finally, the moment came when I would, at last, lay eyes on the most famous painting on the planet: the Mona Lisa.
It was painted around-about 1503-1506 by Leonardo da Vinci. Some postulate that it depicts the wife of a wealthy, Florence-based silk merchant named Lisa del Giocondo, but this has never been confirmed. In short, we don’t know the identity of the subject of this portrait, which makes it a bit mysterious. Also—fun fact—the Mona Lisa once hung in Napoleon’s bedroom.
Interestingly, I’ve rarely heard the experience of seeing this painting in real life receive good reviews. Many people had told me how small this painting was compared to their expectations, so I was prepared for it to be a bit underwhelming. However, what I was NOT prepared for was the controlled chaos of the crowds fighting to get an unimpeded picture of the painting on their smart phones. If it hadn’t been for this blog, I probably would not have joined the crush of people… but I did. You’re welcome. Luckily, years of mosh pits at rock shows in the 2000s had prepared me for this. But it was still extremely stressful. Eventually I made it to the front, but take a look at what I had to endure to get there…
This is one of those moments where you can really see with your own two eyes what fame looks like first hand. Everyday, day, the Mona Lisa watches a never-ending crowd clamoring to make eye contact with her. It’s like that surreal video of Walmart yodel boy (a.k.a. Mason Ramsey) raw-dogging a performance at Coachella just a few weeks after going viral. How weird to see the dynamics of the internet reenacted so literally in real life. But even more surreal was the experience of finally seeing this painting in real life!
Here she is: the Mona Lisa herself. She hangs on this wall, behind bullet proof glass and with dedicated security guards.
the theft of the mona lisa!
The Mona Lisa is clearly an amazing work of art… but I think that if you’ve visited a few major art museums in Europe, you’ve probably seen bigger, better, and more interesting paintings. So why is this little painting the most famous in the world?
Ya’ll know I love a heist… so I am going to assert my admittedly biased opinion here that one of the biggest contributors to her fame was her THEFT in 1911.
The media frenzy that followed was a bit overshadowed by the start of WWI, but it was a big deal at the time! People flocked to the Louvre in even greater numbers to see the empty space where the painting had once hung, similar to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum heist.
The man, the myth, the legend: Vincenzo Peruggia
The actual thief was a man named Vincenzo Peruggia, who had actually fitted glass into a number of paintings in the Louvre, including the Mona Lisa! He, in addition to 2 accomplices, pulled off the heist like this…
In August, during a quiet period, he entered the Louvre early one morning at the workers’ entrance disguised in a white smock, which was the museum workers garb at the time. When the gallery was empty, he quickly took the painting off the wall, removed it from its frame, and wrapped it in the white smock that he had been wearing. He hid the painting in a museum closet, returning for it it later that same day. He actually got stuck behind a locked service door as he tried to make his final escape with the painting, but a plumber who assumed he was a museum worker unwittingly let him out, allowing him to bring the painting back to his apartment in Paris before disappearing. In fairness to the plumber, it was only a couple of weeks prior that Vincenzo legitimately was a museum worker! But no longer. I guess he hadn’t updated his LinkedIn status yet.
At the time of the theft, some of the big bosses at the Louvre were apparently on holiday. The arts minister had apparently told his staff “don't call me unless the Louvre burns down.” Meanwhile, the director, who was also away, was quoted saying “steal the Mona Lisa? That would be like thinking that someone could steal the towers of Notre Dame cathedral."
To which, Vincenzo Peruggia responded “challenge accepted.”
The investigation that followed this theft was a media sensation and stretched all the way to New York City, as multiple ships crossing between Paris and North America were searched. Apparently, Pablo Picasso—who was living in Paris at the time—was actually arrested a suspect… which is a wildly fun fact that I only learned in researching this article! The media hype made the painting basically impossible to sell, so they hid it away for ~2 years while they quietly looked for a buyer. Finally, one of their buyers-to-be contacted the authorities, and the work was recovered. And Vincenzo Peruggia went to jail.
The real ones will know what that GIF is from. I just need somebody to make a movie about this theft!
Anyway, that’s the story of Mona Lisa heist, and perhaps one of the main reasons why the painting became as famous as it is. Still, many tourists are (understandably) underwhelmed when they see this painting in real life. This is such a common theme among visitors to the Louvre, that… well, I’ll just let you watch:
From there, we fought our way back through the crowds to eventually arrive at the lobby once again. And, instead of exiting through the big glass pyramid where we had entered, we followed a subterranean walkway, past a miniature, upside-down glass pyramid, to eventually exit into a mall. We found our way to an escalator, and just like that, we were back out on the streets of Paris, where I breathed a big sigh of relief.
It’s an incredible city. And now that we’ve gotten through (1) the introduction, and (2) the obligatory tourist items, the most well-documented of which is (3) the Louvre, we can dive into the the rest of this series with a bit more specificity. I am looking forward to writing the articles currently in the queue!
