Paris 2: Louvre, d'Orsay, Pantheon

After Notre Dame, we had a tour up and down the Seine followed by supper in the Latin Quarter.  The next day we were up early (on advice) and headed for the Louvre.

The reason for going early was to avoid the crowds heading for the Mona Lisa.

 

So that worked well.

 In fact, the galleries were crowded all around the painting.

So we headed for a quieter, less famous Leonardo:

We had intended merely a quick whistlestop, 'smash and grab' raid on the Louvre, just a quick look at one or two famous old masters and out.  Instead we got seduced, and wandered around quite a number of galleries looking at stuff.  And such stuff!

But the other star of course, is the Louvre itself - particularly the new, underground spaces beneath the Pyramid - the connecting areas which pull it all together.  Absolutely marvellous.

After the Louvre we wandered through the Jardin des Tuileries...

...and then over the new footbridge (at least I don't recall it from last time) to my favourite art gallery - the Musée d'Orsay.  And I do mean the gallery of all those that I've been to that I love the most of all, anywhere.

It isn't just that it is housed in a refurbished and repurposed railway station (so much more romantic than Tate Modern's power station), nor the sumptuousness of the original building.  It is mostlly the art.  All those impressionists and post-impressionists.  Favourite Monets, Manets, Cezannes and Van Goghs.  Whistlers Mother (that isn't its real title).  Delacroix, Daumier, Rousseau, Millet (a new fave), Courbet, Renoir, more Monet, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Sisley, Degas, Berthe Morisot, Redon.  And Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard, Klimt and Munch.  Aaaah.

However, the gallery was going through a major refurbishment and rehang when we were there (just finished  now, according to the Web site), so all of the most famous works - and very many of those I most wanted to see - were on temporary display.  ALL IN THE SAME CORRIDOR.  We had thought the Louvre was crowded, but that was nothing to the number of people in that corridor.

But I ignored them all and enjoyed myself hugely in my favourite arty space.  (Hence no photos).

The Panthéon was new to me: 

According to Wikipedia:

"It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens."

Which is fair enough, but doesn't really convey the overwhelming French Nationalism that pervades the state.  This is a cathedral to secular male Frenchness.  The state and its instruments.

 

The building is huge, and awesome in its own right.  The statues and other memorials scattered around it are large in themselves but can seem overwhelmed by the place.  We wandered and pondered.

 Diderot, famous for the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.

Apparently one of Foucault's first pendulums was originally set a-swinging in the Pantheon, although this is a replica.  The original bob he used then is at the the Musée des Arts et Métiers - as any reader of the Eco novel will (of course!) recall.

The latin apparently translates to "Christ tells the Gallic angel to guard the fate of the fatherland" - very much in keeping with the nationalistic and patriotic tone of the place.

 Georges Guynememer I believe, a WWI flying ace.

 Statue to the glory of "La Convention Nationale".

The author of The Little Prince.

And I've missed out all the others, like Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Carnot, Emile Zola, the Curies and Dumas pere.  Many of whom are buried in the crypt underneath.

So anyway, after that we wandered down to the Latin Quarter and had a cheap supper in a kebab shop... Very French!