Musée

Musée means museum in French!

We went to lots of museums when we were in Paris.  Four to be specific.  But not all on the same day.

 

One of those museums was the Louvre.  It is the biggest museum in the world.  If you actually walked through every part is would be the equivalent of walking 13 miles!

 

 

It actually used to be the palace for the French kings until King Louis XIV (remember him?) decided that it was too small and he built the palace in Versailles (that we have already discussed.)

 

The main entrance to the Louvre is through a giant glass pyramid that leads you underground to a huge entry area.  There were these pyramid skylights everywhere.

 

This is how it looks when it first opens. (This is NOT crowded.)  It was more crowded by the time we left (four hours later....)  This is even just some random side hallway - not even the huge main entryway.

 

They had sculptures, paintings, and artifacts from around the world.

 

The first thing we looked for was the Mona Lisa, because it's the most popular thing at the museum and we wanted to see it before the crowds.....got too big.  It was kind of hard to see, because it had like two railings, a bullet-proof glass casing, and guards standing next to it.  We were lucky to be able to stand as close as possible before the crowds came, which was still not very close. 

 

The Mona Lisa was good, but a lot of the other paintings were just as interesting. 

 

This is one of my favorites.  I bought a notebook with this picture on it.  It's by Botticelli.

 

This is the Winged Victory of Somethrace.  It's a pretty cool statue of a lady with wings and no head.

 

Another famous sculpture of a lady with missing body parts is the Venus de Milo.

 

And from the back...

 

While we were at the Louvre we did a scavenger hunt/activity book and one of the things you had to do was draw the arms on the Venus de Milo and show what you think she was doing.  Kieran drew her playing "Bad Piggies" on an iPad.

 

Here are some sculptures that my mom liked, so we had to take pictures of them.

 

We found that the Venus de Milo wasn't the only ancient Greek to use Apple devices.  This guy clearly is working out with his iPod strapped to his arm.

 

And this guy is taking a picture of himself with his iPhone to post on Facebook.

 

"And here I am at the Louvre!"

 

This is the Code of Hammurabi.  Hammurabi was a ruler of Babylon.  In the picture Hammurabi is receiving the law from one of the Gods.  I was excited when I saw this because I had learned about it in Social Studies this year!

Cat? Frog?  Kermit the Frog?  I don't know...leave your best guess in the comments section.

 

I don't know what this was, but it was HUGE!

 

Here is Kieran having a staring contest with a statue of an Egyptian cat.

 

He lost.

 

Before we knew it, we had spent four hours in the Louvre.  Time for a pastry break!

 

Another day we went to the Musée d'Orsay.  That is the museum with all the cool French impressionist art like Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh....and other amazing artists.  But they wouldn't let you take pictures of the paintings. So!  Here's what the museum looks like.  It used to be a train station.

 

There was a huge cool clock window that you could look through.

 

Another day we went to the Musée de l'Orangerie.  It has the largest collection of Monet's waterlily paintings.  I thought it was cool because the paintings were set up in a big circular room with the paintings stretched out all around you, so you were surrounded by the paintings.  They wouldn't let you take pictures in there, either.  But here is a strange sculpture of a lady? that was out in front.

 

The last museum we went to was the Rodin Museum and Sculpture Garden.  Here is "The Thinker."  You've probably seen it before.  I would tell you my impressions of this one, but I'll have to think about it first....

 

The gardens were cool and had sculptures scattered around.

 

When we left the Rodin museum we saw this very colorful light pole.  When we got closer we saw little stickers that they give you when you enter the museum.  Apparently this is the official "let's take off our sticker" stop.  So....we took off our stickers and stuck them to the pole.  We helped add to this interesting work of art!