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European Travelog D4E1: The Lilies of Orangerie

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Today's the big day - Monet's water lilies at the Orangerie in the morning and the ocean of history and art at the Louvre in the afternoon. It's a bright and sunny morning as we set out to Musée de l'Orangerie. Located on the bank of the Seine, to the west of the Tuileries Garden , this building was originally built in 1852 to store the orange trees of the Tuileries garden during the the winter.  While oranges are great, the claim to fame of this building is as the repository of eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet. As the museum website says: Offered to the French State by the painter Claude Monet on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol for peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death. This unique set, a true "Sixtine Chapel of Impressionism", testifies to Monet’s later work. It was designed as a real environment and crowns the Water Lilies cycl...
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European Travelog D3E2: Saint-Chapelle’s Glass, Cluny's Medieval Treasures, Napoleon’s Tomb, and Rodin’s Sculptures

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Saint-Chapelle's Glass After lunch our first destination is the historic Gothic cathedral of Saint-Chapelle. Built in 1248 CE on the orders of Louis IX, the future Saint Louis, it was to house what was believed to be relics of the Passion of Christ: the Crown of Thorns and the fragment of the True Cross. The cathedral is built with 1113 stained glass windows which depicts the story of the world, according to the Bible, until the arrival of the relics in Paris in the 13th century. Our first view of the cathedral which is on the side of a busy street. There are long lines of visitors, categorized by the entry slot, outside. Once we enter, there's a security screening of the visitors and their bags before we are let into the premises. Once inside, the walls of the cathedral tower above us, the glass windows looking dull and lifeless from outside. King Louis IX paid almost half the GDP of France to acquire the relics that were to be housed here. In 1239, Louis IX bought the crown o...
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