How I Got Lost in the Louvre

The Louvre is only about a block or 2 away from where I live, and yet not until today (and I've been in Paris now going on 6 weeks) did I finally venture in. Anselm Kiefer was having an exhibition, and I thought it would be interesting to see his new work.

So a bit of history - the Castle of the Louvre used to be where the museum is. It was built by Philip II of France. The castle was used as a fortress to defend Paris against the Vikings. Charles V, King of France turned the castle into a palace. However, Francis I, King of France, knocked it down and built a new palace. Henry IV, King of France added the Grande Galerie to the Louvre. The Grande Galerie is more than a quarter mile long and one hundred feet wide.

The salient point of the history lesson, was to point out just the vast size of the museum.

So, I make a beeline for the Kiefer show, not that I don't like antiquities, but I was definitely on a mission. I ask the entrance guard which direction, and follow the signs, up the first flight of 500 steps, until all of a sudden, the signs disappear. However I happened upon a small but extraordinary exhibit of Biedermeier, to my surprise, and despite there being maybe only a dozen examples of furniture, 2 dozen pieces of silver, and a half dozen works on paper, I couldn't pull myself away. It was a jewel of a show.

Ok, so now I had to find the Kiefer show. I asked the next guard to point me in the correct direction, and in perfect English he tells me to take a left and just keep walking through the rooms. After about 10 minutes of feeling like a rat in a maze, I ask the next guard, who tells me I shouldn't have made a left, but instead should have gone to the right. So off I go, retracing my steps, headed in the opposite direction.

I'm going and going until I get to a dead end, and more stairs. So I ask the next guard, who says, oh, no, you need to go down these 500 stairs and go straight down to the end of the hall on the floor below. So that's what I do. No Kiefers. So I ask again, and this guard says, oh no, you have to go back up the 500 steps, it's on that floor. So I do. At the top of the stairs I see another guard, so instead of wandering, I ask, "and where might I find the Kiefer exhibit," and she says, oh no, you have to go down the 500 steps, and at the bottom, my colleague will direct you. And I say to her, your colleague at the bottom of the steps just sent me back up here. And all she will say, is go back downstairs, my colleague will direct you. Maybe these are the only words she knew in English.

All I can tell you is 50 minutes and 4000 steps later, I finally found the Kiefers- which turned out to be 4, very uninteresting small installations, and ultimately weren't even worth walking up 5 steps for.

Thank goodness for such a beautiful Biedermeier show, which made my day.

And that's how I got lost in the Louvre.