Did you know that if you looked at every piece of art in the Louvre for only 30 seconds, and did this continuously round the clock, 24/7 without a break it would take you 100 days to see everything? Not to mention that by that time you would be very hungry and really, really have to go to the bathroom. The louver of course is home to that enigmatic smiling lady, the Mona Lisa, and a couple of other very famous pieces that are mentioned in all the guidebooks. But there are a couple of things that we discovered at the Louvre that were great and that I would recommend to everybody. First, on the lower level is an excavation of a fortress that stood on the site of the Louvre in the middle ages. That’s right.. a thousand years ago, give or take a few years, there was this really big fortress where the Louvre is now. You can see the stone walls and walk through what must have been a moat surrounding the fortress, and then walk inside to the dungeon. All this is underground in the section marked “Medieval Louvre”. <BR>The second really interesting thing at the Louvre was the Apartments of Napoleon III. Talk about a guy that had an over the top decorator. Wow. You walk through a door to find yourself in a small but richly decorated room with creaky wood floors, probably the original. The floors have not been maintained, and have dried out. Then you walk through a few more rooms until you get to the grand salon. If this had been a movie set, no one would have believed it. The room was about 40 by 40, with 20 foot high ceilings dominated by a massive chandelier. At some point in the construction of this room, there must have been a guy yelling, “More cherubs!! More!! You can never have enough cherubs! And be sure to use plenty of that gold paint!”<BR>

Phil, I did the "Medievel Louvre" tour last year but didn't see the dungeon. Must not have been excavated yet?? It was really cool.

Thanks for the suggestions, Phil. We'll be leaving for Paris next week and we'll make it a point to see the "Medieval Louvre"!

Louvre<BR><BR>See http://www.canoe.ca/TravelEurope/louvre.html<BR><BR>for a 3 hour Louvre tour including directions to the foundations of the fortress.

I should point out that the tour is a self-guided Louvre tour. It is a great way for first-timers to see all of the major highlights of the Louvre. My wife & I completed it in 2 hrs 45 minutes.<BR><BR>On your second trip, you can be more specific & just focus on a couple of key periods/areas.

I'm in complete agreement with the previous postings...only because we had Scott Emerson as our tour guide, he took us to see the medieval excavations which were most interesting as well as Napoleon's apartments and I concur that he had one enthusiastic, no hold barred decorator...my comment was that they really didn't get it with the whole Versailles bit leading to the Revolution. It was also interesting comparing those apartments with what was available to the American President at the time (Mount Vernon). Certainly makes us look like an exercise in restraint and understatement (of course, these days, Enron and all, we're more guilty of wretched excess).