Trips To Paris

One of the most popular museums in the world is The Louvre Museum, one of Paris’ great landmarks. Its galleries hold art works of many famous painters everybody has heard of Mona Lisa, but what else is there to visit in there?

Many people are familiar with this museum if they have read The Da Vinci Code but few people know that this museum started as a 12th century fortress, guarding over Paris.

Since then, over hundreds of years, the gallery has been enlarged and has become what it is today. An interesting fact is that, for a short while, king Louis XIV lived in the Louvre. After his short stay there, in 1674, he moved to the sumptuous Palace of Versailles and left the Louvre to house the Royal Collection.

The museum was opened to the public in 1793 and it showed only 537 paintings on display. The public were allowed free entry and every body was pleased: "it is perceived as a major accomplishment and very well received". These days, the collections in the Louvre change constantly and also the amount of art works as exhibitions are frequently renewed. In this moment, The Louvre Museum gathers approximately 380.000 pieces. Among these pieces there are famous ones, like Mona Lisa, but also a lot of rare exhibits from all over the world, showing the history of mankind.

The Egyptians

Almost 50,000 pieces are gathered in the Egyptian exhibition in the museum. The Louvre collection is among the world’s largest. The exhibition is supervised by The Large Sphinx and is spreads in 22 rooms. A valuable piece on display is the Gebel-ei Arak knife from 3400 BC.

Greek and Roman

This collection reunites statues and artifact from the Neolithic to the 6th century BC, and many of them are the oldest in the world.

Islamic Art

An important collection belongs to the Islamic culture and sums up over 10,000 exhibits. Among these pieces are ceramics, glassware, wood and ivory. In the museum you will be able to see 3 pages of the Shahnameh, an epic poem written by Ferdowsi in Persian.

Paintings

The painting collections are mostly formed by French paintings of French artists (almost two-thirds of the museums 6.000 paintings) and close to 1,200 pieces are European. It is a fact that Mona Lisa is one of the most important paintings of humankind but the tourists should not hurry and rush through the collections and neglect the other paintings. They should get a real feel of the enormous work on display.

The time you will need to explore the halls of the Louvre is a full day but you will feel rewarded in the end. Many people and specialists like to devote whole days to specific areas of the museum. Once, Alberto Giacometti said, "I’ve been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copies everything in drawing, trying to understand".