| Photo 1: The main Louvre Museum
Shop. First floor: Books, calendars, magazines, pictures, slides, and CD-ROMS Second floor: Art replicas (including the Venus de Milo in the top center of this picture!)
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By this time we were starving and
we had lunch at the little café in the museum underground plaza. Then we went into the
little video theater and watched a couple of films on the museum and art history (and
rested our feet from walking around all day)! Thus refreshed, we proceeded to the museum
shops where there was an amazing collection of books, slides, CD-ROM's and reproductions
of the famous artifacts in a two-story large modern area (photo above). They have a very well done Louvre museum "virtual tour" CD-ROM, but I couldn't find any copies of the English language edition. When I attempted to ask one of the shop clerks I couldn't understand whether they were just out of stock or whether they were out of print. I'd still like to get one in English if I can find it. By the time we got through all the Museum shops (and several other shops in the underground center), we came up to the outside where it was getting to be dusk. We went over and walked around the Tuleries Gardens until the attendants herded all us tourists out because they close the park at sundown. I had read about the special exterior lighting they had done for the Louvre Palace so we sat on a bench and watched the lights come on as it got dark. They had some special low-profile strip lights made with tungsten halogen linear bulbs. They use these along the pediments to very subtly highlight the building. The effect is much nicer than big flood lamps would be. |
