After many days of sitting in a coffee shop, pumping out papers and listening to a stream of French café music, you may finally have the chance to live your lifelong fantasy and jet off to Paris. By participating in a study abroad program this summer, you can see the sights of the City of Lights, enriching your education all the while.
You may come to find as you are hopping from country to country that the French have a unique sense of understated elegance that is absolutely captivating. For this reason, you should take full advantage of your time in Paris, drinking in as much aesthetic culture as you can by heading to the Louvre.
Explore the Louvre for some “ooh la la” art
Perhaps one of the most monumental places where you can take in all the visual excellence that the city has to offer is the Palais Louvre. Over the centuries, French monarchs and other governmental bodies have been compiling masterpiece after masterpiece from all corners of the world. Nowadays, a decent number of those notable international works are fittingly displayed within the expansive confines of the Louvre.
Originally, the Louvre was a fortress. It was built in the early 1300s by Phillipe-Auguste, undergoing a complete overhaul in the middle of the 16th century when it was converted into one of the royal residences. Following the French Revolution at the end of 1700s, it was once again repurposed, becoming what it is today: a museum and a pillar of France.
If you decide to add the Louvre to your to-see list, then you should take a few factors into consideration. First and foremost, you may want to think about making more than one trip so that you don’t miss out on anything.
Maintain that joie de vivre and make multiple trips
There are numerous wings making up this museum, filled with art including everything from Assyrian and Etruscan civilizations to even Islamic cultures. The Louvre houses pieces that date back to the Middle Ages, spanning all the way up to the mid-1800s. If you try to tackle the entire Louvre in a single day, you may start to become overwhelmed by all of the astounding works and too tuckered out to truly absorb what you are seeing. Instead, you should avoid being a cranky art spectator by making multiple trips, digesting each collection little by little so that you can optimize your time spent there.
This is important because you don’t want to overlook some of the most famous masterpieces from the history of the mankind that are kept in the Louvre. How disappointed would you be if you didn’t end up seeing da Vinci’s “La Jaconde,” better known as “Mona Lisa,” because you were tired? Chances are, you would not be too thrilled. The same sentiment goes for equally incredible works like the “Venus de Milo,” Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” and the “Winged Victory of Samothrace.”
After exploring the art history of France and the Western world in general, you can take to the streets and start to delve into the more modern aesthetic personality that Paris presents. With the Louvre as your base, you can build a solid understanding of the country’s art – and all over the course of summer 2014.