Saturday morning at the Louvre.
Not unthinkable after all.
If you live in Paris, you know better than to go to the Louvre on a Saturday morning in September — a couple of weeks into la rentrée, but still very much tourist season.
However, sometimes I like to forget the things I know. (At my age I also like to pretend that forgetting is a choice.) Before eleven on a perfect September day, what better destination than the Louvre? At the very least, I’d get to stroll through the Tuileries before the heat of day. The worst that could happen is that the line under the inverted pyramid is an hour long and I’d have to get a cup of Starbucks and drown my sorrows.
The Starbucks weeping session proved unnecessary. The other thing to do if you live in Paris is to buy annual passes to the major museums. These are truly ‘skip the line’ cards, and wildly affordable. As long as you drop into each museum more than four or five times in the calendar year, you’ve equalled the individual admission tariffs and saved hours of time.
This was one of those lucky mornings. I flashed my Amis du Louvre card and walked in.
Both before and beyond the security checkpoint, the concourse into the museum is a continuation of the shops in the Carrousel du Louvre, the underground shopping mall. There is the Librairie-Boutique and, across the hall, the museum’s souvenir shop. In other storefronts there is chocolate; there are macarons (well, bien sûr); there are fancy pens and credit card holders and portfolios. There is the Comédie Française, and two new and way overdue fancy cafes and bakeries.
OK, so I admit that most of my Louvre trips involve as much people-watching as art study. Though the security line was short, there were already thousands of people in the galleries and on the stairways. I’ve seen the Winged Victory several dozen times, and I am still gobsmacked by her majesty.
Besides people-watching, I like to look through the windows at the courtyards — mostly, of course, the central courtyard with its spectacular I. M. Pei pyramid.
People should take their own pictures. Photos make us pay attention. Yes, capturing them can sometimes make us behave like boorish big game hunters, but for me, photography is an exercise in seeing and choosing — and then editing and remembering.
I have adored this bust of the tragic Antinous since I first saw it, not least because of Marguerite Yourcenar’s lovely historical novel, Memoirs of Hadrian.
There are restaurants and affordable snack bars scattered through the museum. This is the view from the elegant but uncomfortable carved bench seats on the balcony overlooking the grand entrance hall.
Finally, back into the park and home to the 8th.
