Musée d’Orsay, Paris
We’re in the middle of a six day, all museum pass EXTRAVAGANZA! 69 euros buys us unlimited, multi visit access to 54 museums in the Paris area. One cannot hope to visit them all, so the best we hope for is making our money back.
(In those three days, we’ve visited: Picasso Museum – 14€, the Centre Pompidou – 11€, Le Louvre – 12€, Musée d’Orsay – 11€, and the Musée de l’Armé, 9.5€, for a total recoup, against a 69€ investment, of 57.5€. We’re well on the way!)
Don’t get me wrong; the artwork has been phenomenal. Beautiful works by my favourite artists, including Rodin, Cezanne, Picasso, Mondrian, Newman… but the clear attraction of the parade of museums has been the architecture.
The Musée d’Orsay used to be a train station. But with undersized platforms, it quickly lost its efficiency, and by the 1970s, it was slated to be torn down. Such a wonderful turn of events that has kept it alive, and vibrant, and jaw droppingly inspiring. Pictures may (arguably) give some semblance of a representation of a work of art (not in all cases, say like Picasso’s Guernica, but in many), but photos give not the merest hint of how grand these buildings are.
I expect Sherlock Holmes to pop out of a window to save the day. I even see Robert Downey’s face there.