Art Treasures of the Louvre

What a treasure trove, bewilderingly huge, I took a tour of the highlights then wandered off to the little visited apartments of Napoleon. I love this picture of the rabble trying to get a snap of the Mona Lisa, you want to cover her up and give her a bit of a respite. What intrigues me is im sure none of these people could tell you why its famous, it just is - its as famous as can be in the art world and therefore we are drawn to it, we have to see it, to be near it, to say we have seen it, and to show other people we have seen it, but it no longer has anything to do with the painting itself as an artistic endevour

An Abundance of Riches

Today was heavy on the feet but easy on the eye. First I went out to Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin's Versailles..of sorts. A relative of the first of the Hanoverian English Kings - George I (yes..when we ran out of English heirs and had to go to Germany for the next one), Queen Sophie Charlotte created a beautiful palace here. Then a couple of buses to the East side and the fabulous Museum Island. A lot of these museums were badly damaged during the war, and quite a bit of the treasures have only managed to find their way back from the former Soviet Union in recent years. The Egyptian museum contains the world Famous Nefertiti bust (unfortunately no photographs in that room) and the Pergamon museum contains the reconstructed Pergamon Altar from Ancient Greece, A Roman gateway and the incredible blue faence tiled processional way from Ancient Babylon. Theres also a museum of Islamic art there, amongst a whole load of other stuff I didnt have time for. All of these places have excellent and informative audio guides. Really incredible stuff.