Soccer at the Tuileries

On this first Sunday of the month, admission to most of Paris's publicly operated museums is free. I set out in the afternoon for the Orangerie, at the corner of the Jardin des Tuileries next to the Place de la Concorde, hoping that what had seemed to me an obscure exhibition of drawings would not draw too many people. I was wrong--the line stretched nearly the length of the long building. The show is a personal selection by an art historian, Werner Spies, from the Orangerie's drawings collection.

I walked back along the Rue de Rivoli to the Tuileries Metro stop, and this was the view back, from the edge of the park (see the map). The dusty area is ideal for pickup soccer (football in Europe), completely separate from the long middle of the park--now freshly green.

The building in the background is the Jeu de Paume, now the most important Paris venue for photography exhibitions. But in 1958, when I first visited Paris, it still displayed the superb impressionist and post-impressionist collections now in the Musee d'Orsay, and I was blown away by them. The paintings hung simply, in traditional, large galleries, and it was wonderful--my first-time introduction to top-class art. I miss it sorely. (More detail on that experience is here. The Wiki article summarizes the history.)