In Love with the Louvre

Most people, who have read the novel “Da Vinci Code” for the first time, would probably feel an irresistible urge to visit the actual site of the events in the story- namely the famous museum in Paris- the Louvre. I too had similar interests but by the time I got a chance to visit the place, it was so overwhelming that I forgot the incidents in the novel altogether.

The general flow of events that could happen to a first time visitor like me is:
Great initial interest in the museum and careful observation of the first 20 or 30 works of art. Spend decreasing amounts of time with each exhibit like skimming the pages of a book.
By the time fatigue creeps in, discover that one has just reached the beginning of the best section.
After about half the galleries are seen, succumb to the sensory overload and return with streaming illusions of contrasting images, sculptures.

Its quite easy to take good looking photos here, since many of the exhibits are awesome and all you have to do is take photos. But that’s exactly what everybody else has in mind too; the biggest challenge is to take pictures without being dominated by the images of the countless tourists. The worst was the gallery which housed the Mona Lisa, was simply overcrowded with digital camera wielding paparazzi photographing it, while she seems to smile with a tinge of sarcasm at the admiring crowd.

But after this anti climax, we went around the art gallery containing medium size to HUGE paintings, and the play of lights and shades by the artists, and the emotions and expressions of the subjects gave most of them a photo like quality. We could have gone taking more photos as much as our cameras allowed, but the memory capacity in our brains were overloaded with the incredible images. it was time to move on, not to the next collections, but to other inspirations that Paris had to offer.