Monthly Archives: August 2018

Camille. The great passionate affair I mentioned in the previous post began with the arrival at his studio of 20-year-old Camille Claudel. Claudel was an aspiring sculptor who had studied privately with Rodin’s friend Alfred Boucher because the École des …

The tour ended in the Cour Napoléon, we tipped our guide, and standing at the edge of the Tuilleries Garden on a beautiful – if somewhat warm – Sunday afternoon Pat and I decided that if we were going to …

A museum is born. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be “a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts”. They nationalized the royal collection when the revolutionaries captured Louis XVI on 10 …

Chateau Louvre. At the close of the previous post, Louis IX had begun the transformation of the Louvre from a fortress to a royal residence but it proved to be a particularly gradual transformation. Louis IX, the only French king …

Broadly speaking, there are three ways to approach tourism in a city with as many diverse attractions as Paris. On one hand you can choose the highly organized option – sweating out a list of places to visit and sights …