View from the Louvre

This is a view from the second floor on the Richelieu wing of the Louvre (the highest), looking west toward the Jardin des Tuileries and the Eiffel Tower. Large may be best.

In a few weeks people should be eating and drinking on the terrace to the right. I.M. Pei's wonderful pyramid is out of the frame to the lower left. You can see it here (backlit by the sun nearly three weeks ago).

I love the Louvre views from this level. Here's yet another one, much wider and from further back, in 2009.

I saw two very good small special exibitions: Drawings by Louis de Boullogne le Jeune (d. 1733), and "character heads" by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an 18th century Austrian sculptor.

At the end of the afternoon we visited the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the best venue for photographs in Paris--free after 5 on Wednesdays. They have rotating special exhibitions (4-5 at a time). Best today were Vietnam war photographs by Henri Huet (died 1971 in Vietnam)--literally as good an exhibition of war photographs that I have ever seen. Also wonderful collages by Jacques Prévert.