Next - time for the museums and historical sights! First the Pompidou Centre, home of the French National Museum of Modern Art. The Pompidou was controversial from day 1, due to its extraordinary design that has most normally internal functions of the building on the outside. It's different, as is most modern art to the eye of the beholder. We viewed a huge number of works which cover the entire 20th Century of the art world.
Ste-Chapelle was built in the 13th Century by King Louis IX partly to house his collection of Holy relics, including Jesus' Crown of Thorns. The stained glass is hardly done justice in pictures it is so detailed and colorful. The windows in the church tell the story of the entire Old Testament (if you know how to read them).
Next was the smallest museum of the day, Musee de L'Orangerie, adjacent to Musee du Louvre in the Jardin des Tuileries. This place just reopened a couple of years ago after extensive renovations. It houses a small but important collection of Impressionist Art, most notably two oval galleries which surround the viewer with Monet's Water Lilies like you've never seen. Quite fantastic!
To follow this we went a few blocks down the street and across the Seine to the Musee D'Orsay, which houses perhaps the finest collection of Impressionist paintings in the world. We took a 90 mintue guided tour (in English) and learned a lot more about many of our favorite artists. Another unique house for art, too, the D'Orsay is a former train station that was converted and reopened about 30 years ago.
We thoroughly enjoyed all of these fine arts palaces and wish we had time and energy for the Granddaddy of them, the Louvre, but that is to be for another time.
