Well, there’s no point in living in Paris if you’re not going to go see the sights. So, last week, I went out to visit the Louvre. On my way there, I made a detour to see Sainte-Chapelle, which I had never seen before.
The palais de la Cité, where the chapel is located, is now the home for the Paris law courts, so you have to go through security, complete with x-raying bags, to get in to the chapel. They’re doing some renovation, so the exterior is swathed with scaffolding, and the lower chapel is cluttered with tools and drop clothes and the like. (As an aside, I really think they should discount admission when work is going on.) Even without the clutter, the lower chapel, while nice enough, was nothing all that impressive.
The upper chapel, on the other hand, was utterly exquisite. The upper walls are nearly entirely paneled in stained glass in vibrant reds and blues. On a sunny day, it must be dazzling. As it is, I was enthralled.
My next stop was the Louvre. (The last time I had been was before I.M. Pei’s pyramids had been completed.) The immensity of the Louvre still takes my breath away. Try as I might, I simply can not imagine people actually living there: everything is on simply too grand a scale.
I wandered about for a couple of hours, and probably covered less than a quarter of the total museum. But then, I’m not much of a fan of painting, and I was mostly interested in the sculptures and antiquities. Especially my favorite: the Winged Victory:
There is, by the by, a Starbucks in the Louvre. This is just so wrong. Come to think of it, I can’t recall having seen any other Starbucks in Paris (not yet anyway).
