The Pyramid which adorns the central courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris, France

Museums … Admire the Accomplishments of the Past and Present

Museums, including those in France, contain and propose more visual knowledge and know-how than any other place on earth.

Of course there’s internet where you can find just about anything and libraries
filled with books covering the gamut of subjects. Both have their pluses but they
just don’t offer you the same ‘visual hands-on’ experience museums do.

The Pyramid which adorns the central courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris, France

The Pyramid which adorns the central courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris, France

Think about the last time you were awed by the sheer size of that dinosaur display and the number of vertebra–each irregular bone in its neck! You maybe didn’t see it but do you realize the size and power of the heart muscle needed to pump its blood all the way up that 5 storey high neck to its head and brain … colossal, no animal today has a heart that could do this. You can really picture that standing in front of this monster … only in a museum.

France has over 6,000 museums

Yes, that’s not a mistake-six thousand.

The most world famous is the Louvre with renowned chef d’oeuvres like the Mona LisaWinged Victory of Samothrace, or The Winged Nike (who was the goddess of Victory after which the Nike company is named) of  The Stele of Hammurabi and many more marvels. Talk about a 3-dimensional educational outing… that’ll take you into the 4th dimension.

Here is a list of the most visited museums in Paris

Louvre
Musée National d’Art Moderne
Musée d’Orsay
Grand Palais
Musée du quai Branly
Musée de l’Orangerie
Palais de Tokyo
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

France has a group of about 20 national museums (list here) that have free admission to their permanent collections on the first Sunday of each month. Worth noting on your calendars. This does not include the Chateau de Versailles or the Louvre or private museums like: Marmottan-Monet, Jacquemart-André, les Arts décoratifs, la Maison rouge, le Palais de Tokyo, les Fondations Cartier et Louis-Vuitton…

So, what do you do in your spare time?

What are your interests? Somewhere there’s a museum that suits your taste. Do a Google search but, here are some ideas:

Bakery, snow and mountains, theatre, archaeology, silver mines, silk, eco-museum, paper, Canson paper and Montgolier, regional folklore, dolls, extermination of Jewish children-crimes against humanity, chemistry, music, weaving, religious art, liqueurs, ski, Hector Berlioz, pottery, automats, highway construction …

This is just a sprinkling of ideas, remember, there are 6,000 museums in France … there are certainly one or two that will catch your attention.

Skneller
Author: Skneller

I'm the creator of BonjourLaFrance which started off as a personal site in 1998 and has developed into the global site it is today.

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