Golden Items in Churches and Abbeys Are Why They Were Targets for Plunder

Like many major cities, Paris has the well-known museums that attract hundreds of thousands if not millions of visitors each year. As much as we enjoy the Louvre and the Musee D’Orsay, our focus this year was more off-the-main-route museums. We already knew that the Museum of Middle Ages (the Cluny) was a short walk from the hotel, but there is a special exhibit that we hadn’t seen on our previous trip. The Lady and the Unicorn is a six-piece tapestry set that dates back about 1,000 years although no one actually knows the background of it. It was discovered in the 1800s, I believe, and thankfully preserved. The lighting in the room was quite dim and no flashes are allowed, so we’ll see how hubby’s photos turn out. It is an impressive body of work and the colors are remarkably clear considering their age.

As I posted, we did find the Picasso Museum and it is quite well-done. Many of his earlier works were pieces that I could appreciate and of course hubby liked the later themes that are most associated with the name of Picasso. It was a surprise to me to see all the sculptures and the incredible variety of mediums that he worked with. I am not certain of how old he was when he did his final piece, but we did see some from 1971 and he died in 1973 at the age of 91.

As it turned out, the De La Croix Museum was within walking distance of our hotel, but definitely not one that you would run across. It was an apartment on the Left Bank and became a museum only through the dedicated efforts of a number of people. Interestingly, even though he rented the four room apartment, he was able to convince his landlord to build a detached studio for him and there was a charming small garden that must have been a wonderful spot for him. There was one other small museum that we would have liked to have seen, but we opted to go to the Eiffel Tower instead. There is just an element of sentimentality of walking around the Tower that we don’t like to pass up. The line to go up was very long and we decided not to do that.

Exterior Wall of Studio of Eugene De La Croix and Partial View of Garden