I see dead people! And some really pretty art.

So just a little warning before I get started: This post will be pretty long with lots of history and stuff. I'm the history geek so that's what I like to talk about. However, I do understand that many of you do not care quite as much about all this, so feel free to just skim here and there. But most of these stories are pretty interesting, so I would encourage you to try to get into it if you aren't a geek like me.



So on Wednesday night, I went to the Louvre. What some of you might not know is that the Louvre is actually the old Palais Royal (Royal Palace), where the Royal family lived before the Chateau de Versailles was completed in 1682 under King Louis XIV. That's not the guy who got his head cut off, in case you're wondering. When Louis XIV was a kid, the French citizens tried to take down the monarchy by raiding the palace (that would be the Louvre), and pretty much freaking everyone out, including the then boy-King Louis XIV. So when Louis was old enough he turned the hunting lodge at Versailles into the main palace for the French court etc. After the Revolution, the French citizens opened the Palais Royal as an art museum. The collection has been changed in the intervening 200 years, including the addition of the famous glass pyramids in 1989, but that's the general idea.

 So this is the Venus de Milo. She's in the Louvre with lots of other sculptures. She was found in 1820 on the Greek island Melos. Because the western world was in the midst of a pretty large classical fad, she was hailed as the symbol of everything Greek and beautiful. In case you're not up on your Greek Mythology, Venus (Aphrodite) is the Greek goddess of love, mother of cupid. She was the wife of Hephaestus (God of the forge) and Aries' (God of War) lover. While most "Greek" statues around are actually later Roman copies, this is a rare original Greek sculpture. Her arms have never been found. She is life-sized and meticulously anatomically correct. Her dress is a size 14, and she is of average female height.

 So here on the left we have Winged Victory, or "Victoire de Samothrace". She was originally poised on the prow of a ship. Later she was placed on a hilltop to commemorate a great naval victory. On the right is her right hand which was found later. What I love about this statue is the detail and motion you can see in the sculpture. You can actually see the wind blowing at her dress as she gets ready to take flight. It's pretty amazing.

This is a painting on a ceiling just outside of the Apollo Gallery. I sorta have a thing for paintings on ceilings. I think they're really cool because they're generally not the first thing you look at in a room and can give the room a completely different mood. For example, this ceiling has Icarus practically falling down on top of you, but you don't even realize it until you look up. For those of you who don't know/have forgotten, Icarus was this guy in Mythology who wanted to fly really badly. So his father helped him make some wings out of wax. His father warned him to be careful and not to fly too close to the sun. But of course, Icarus got too excited and flew near the sun, so his wax wings melted and he fell back to Earth. It's one of those stories that's supposed to teach a lesson about the limitations of humanity and blind ambition.

 The Apollo Gallery. It's really long and beautiful. When the Louvre was a Palace, this is where they would have parties and things like that. This is one of those rooms that really reminds you that the Louvre was a Palace once upon a time.

 So here she is, the Mona Lisa. She's small and often obscured by tourists trying to get a good look. I went pretty late in the evening in the middle of the week, so the crowds really weren't bad at all. Yes she's small and hidden behind a big pane of glass, but I really do think she's worth all the hubbub. I really love the painting style. Leonardo Da Vinci used this special technique to that the edges appear fuzzy and not very clearly defined. That doesn't mean that the painting is blurry; I just think is really cool that you can't see the corners of her mouth no matter how closely you look. Also, I love that Leonardo Da Vinci almost always painted portraits in a way that makes it appear that the subject's eyes follow you. No matter from which angle you look at Mona Lisa, she seems to be looking right at you. That's some serious skill on Leonardo's part.




This is one of my favorite paintings. I really love French painting and paintings that have a lot of things going on at the same time. After a while you see things going on in the background that you hadn't noticed before. This painting is called "Sacre de l'Empereur Napoléon, 1806-1807" (The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon) by Jacques-Louis David. When you first look at it, it looks like Napoleon is about to crown his wife Josephine. If you know the story, however, that's not actually what's going on. Josephine has already been crowned by the Pope (the guy in the funny hat who looks a little p.o.'d). The normal way of a coronation involved the Pope crowning the King or Emperor or whoever; however, at the last moment Napoleon changed his mind and decided that he should crown himself because he didn't like the idea of anyone having authority over him. So he stands up and steals the crown from the Pope and places it on his own head (scandalous!).

This one is just for my Mom. I love you and miss you, Mama.

 This is the view from the top of the Galleries Lafayette (HUGE department store in Paris). There as a really great view of cool things like the Opera (above) and the Eiffel Tower.

On Saturday morning, I visited the Père Lachaise Cemetery with my handy Rick Steves guide book to help me navigate what truly is a city of dead people. The cemetery is a relatively new attraction; it opened in 1804, but this is Paris, so that was not very long ago. Today there are about 70,000 people buried here, including a few well-known (but dead) musicians and writers. There are still vacancies, but the price is pretty steep, more than €11,000 (that's about $14,200)!

This is the Columbarium/Crematorium. In the surrounding courtyard and underground there are thousands of little niches built into the walls and catacombs below for those who prefer to be cremated.  

 This is Oscar Wilde's (1854-1900) spot. If you look closely at the picture on the left, you can see where a few heavily-lipsticked well wishers mourned the acclaimed writer and so-called "martyr to homosexuality". If you look closely at the photo on the right, you can see his name behind the graffiti'd glass barrier. Below that (you can't see it in the picture) it ironically reads "He died fortified by the Sacraments of the Church". Not sure how Mr. Wilde would feel about that being on his tombstone, but hey, that's not my call. When I was visiting the site, there was a really cute middle-aged British couple nearby who were scandalized that people would write on the tombstone, but honestly I think Mr. Wilde would appreciate it. It sorta reminded me of the 7th Harry Potter book when Harry and Hermione go to visit Godric's Hollow and find a sign outside the site of Harry's parents' death. The sign is sort of a historical marker, describing the significance of the site, and well-wishers have written messages of hope on it. Hermione is scandalized that people dared to write on the sign, but Harry thinks it's great. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Oscar Wilde's final resting place hasn't been desecrated (for the most part). Knowing what I do about Mr. Wilde, I think he'd probably get a kick out of it.

Here we have Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), a Jewish-American writer who dropped out of med school to move to Paris. Buried just behind her is her life partner Alice B. Toklas. She was right in the middle of some of the best artistic and intellectual minds of her time. Picasso painted her, Hemingway sought her approval, and Virgil Thompson set her words to music. She is best known for her gusty memoir Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and her quote "America is my home, but Paris is my hometown."







If you know me, you know I can be a bit of a WWII history fiend. So it should come as no surprise that these memorials to the French victims of the Holocaust. Below and to the left is a memorial to an unknown victim; it says "here lies an unknown person, deported to work, a victim of the betrayal." The betrayal referred to is of course the French government's complicity and cooperation in the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps. I'm going to stop there, though; I wrote seventeen pages on the subject so I could go on all day.  Let me know if you do want to know about that, though. On the right and at the bottom are memorials to those who died in concentration camps.

 So this is the "Mur des Fédérés", or the Communard's Wall. In 1870, after Napoleon initiated the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia invaded France. For the most part, France surrendered quietly (as they usually do), but Paris held out, refusing to give in. Their own French government was collaborating with the Prussians in Versailles, so Paris formed their own socialist government called the Paris Commune. In May of 1871, the French government sent troops into Paris. For a week, the soldiers swept Eastward through the city, killing tens of thousands. A smaller group of remaining Parisian resisters holed up inside the walls of Père Lachaise and made one last stand. At dawn on May 28 1871, 147 resistors were lined up against this wall and and shot by French soldiers; they were buried in a mass grave where they fell. This wall commemorates the death of the Paris Commune, after which Paris was ruled by martial law for five years.

 This is Molière (1622-1675). He's really famous in France (and among French professors). Père Lachaise was not the original location of his tomb, but he was the first real celebrity to be reburied here, paving the way for the artists and writers who came afterward. Molière was a comic playwright, most famous for his presence in Louis XIV's court. King Louis loved his satirical plays, and pretty much set him up for life. Ironically, he died on stage, playing a hypochondriac pretending to be sick to get some sympathy. In the last scene of the play, Molière's character was taken by a violent coughing fit, as a last ditch effort by the character to get some sympathy. But it turned out not to be fake. Molière died shortly after the end of the play. He is known for little snippets of entertaining wisdom, like: "We die only once, and for such a long time."

 So earlier, when I said that this cemetery is like a city of dead people, I wasn't kidding. Seriously. This is just a small taste of how huge this place is, with levels upon levels of dead people.

Couldn't go without saying hi to Jim Morrison (1943-1971). It was the only grave I visited that had more than 2 or 3 people looking at it. Fun facts: This is not the original headstone. The original was a cool/funky bust of Jim Morrison, but it was stolen in the dead of night. It was replaced by this lower-key headstone to discourage that sort of thing. Another fun fact: Morrison's friends' requests to have Morrison buried here were originally turned down. The cemetery's director had obvious issues with the idea. Because an alcoholic, drug-addicted rock star would really fit right in with all the literary and artistic figures. Then Morrison's friends mentioned that he was a writer, and the director immediately found a spot.

 This is Chopin (1810-1849). Born Polish, he moved to Paris at the age of 21 and never left. Best-known for composing nearly 200 pieces for piano. The most interesting thing about him is his history with the novelist George Sand. They say opposites attract, and they did with these two. The romance faded quickly, but they lived together for nearly a decade in this crazy (and somewhat masochistic) bitter love-hate limbo. When she left him, Chopin was devastated all the same and died two years later at just 39. Fun fact: While his body does lie here, his heart is embedded in a church column in Warsaw.







This is my favorite story of all the ones I've told today. this is the final resting place of Héloïse (1101-1164) and Abélard (1079-1142). They are by far the oldest residents of this city of the dead. Peter Abélard was an independent scholar who dared to question the church. He set up a school in Paris on the left bank that would become the University of Paris. Héloïse, the brainy niece of a powerful Parisian came to the school to study. Abélard was hired to give Héloïse private lessons. Soon the two were passionately in love. They left Paris and were married in secret for fear of damaging Abélard's career. About a year later, Héloïse gave birth to a son. Soon word reached Héloïse's powerful uncle, and he unleashed his fury on the two of them, sending some very unsavory persons to Abélard's bedroom in the dead of night, castrating the poor fellow. The lovers were separated forever; Héloïse was sent to a convent, where she became an influential abbess, and Abélard retired to a monastery where he wrote some more controversial ideas about the church (he was on trial for heresy when he died). But through all of this, Héloïse and Abélard kept up an intimate relationship purely through letters that still exist today. The two were first buried together in Héloïse's convent and then later laid to rest in Père Lachaise. The canopy of the tomb (that's the building around the two headstones) is built from stones from both Héloïse's convent and Abélard's monastery. 

Last but not least is Colette (1873-1954). She was the most celebrated female French writer with a somewhat controversial personal life, including three marriages and more than one suspected homosexual relationship. In her 30's she scandalised all of Paris by having a wardrobe malfunction (À la Janet Jackson) while trying out a new career as a music hall performer. She was also the author of the novel Gigi, which later became a film and musical in the 1950s.

So have you had enough art and dead people? I think I sure have. Don't know what I'll write about next. We'll see what happens; though if there is some specific aspect of my life in Paris that you'd like to hear about, leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do!