LA LOUVRE-THE GRAND MUSEUM
Louvre in Latin means, each of a set of an angled slats fixed at regular intervals in a door or shutter or cover, to allow air and light penetrate through. More true to this meaning, the grand museum in Paris is one of the largest in the world, established in 1793 with these fixed angular slats made of glass.
It was built up way back in 1190. But the king there hired Pierre Lescot to develop it as a royal palace in 1546. A mixture of Italian and French features, this was extended in 1857 by the succeeding king. It houses as many as 6000 world class paintings, including Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. By the time Louis XIV completed his tenure as the king, nearly 1500 more paintings were put on display in the walls.
Later Catherine de Medici ordered for constructing yet another palace building named as Tuieries to its west side. Then these two magnificent structures were clubbed together as one!
Having a wide varieties of paintings which included the 19th century paintings from all over the world, like Islamic, Egyptian, Oriental, Etruscan and Roman, it houses the paintings of all frontline artists right from Ruben, Titians, Poussin, Renoir Rembrandt and Leonardo Da Vinci. And the winged Victory of Venus de Milo and Samothrace are the added attraction there.
As if to crown all these, the Louvre Pyramid, made of glass, outside the museum stands out noticeably. It was Pei, a Chinese-born American who had designed it. But the glass never obstructed the view of the museum.
Whether one who is visiting is a genuinely interested person or a critic, it took more than a month to critically appreciate them or make them pass some sarcastic remark. So nice and so abundant they were.
An interesting piece about it is that, in 1912 the original painting of Mona Lisa was stolen! But the six numbers of the models of it were sold out as the originals! So genuine those replicas were! However, the stolen one was traced back and restored to the museum.