Rajeev's World: Visiting Musée Du Louvre... Part III

Monday, July 27, 2015

Visiting Musée Du Louvre... Part III

With about half an hour to spare, we moved on to the Greek Roman antiquities section of the Louvre.

With such a huge collection, it is said that it takes over 3 days to do a complete round of the museum, to view the 35,000 objects and artefacts from prehistory to the 21st century, which are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres. It is little wonder that this treasure trove makes the Louvre the most visited museum in the world, receiving more than 9.7 million visitors in 2012.

But there is a darker side to it. Somewhere deep inside I felt an extreme unease seeing some of the artefacts here. How did they make their way from the countries of origin to here? And it turned out, like many other museums in the western world, some of items on display here are indeed disputed and were plundered from their countries of origin as part of colonial conquests.

This is indeed sad, but perhaps there is a silver lining - at least these artefacts have been saved from destruction and from getting into the black market like the way it happened in Iraq or Syria.

Moving downstairs...

I quite liked the patterned mosaic on the floor - Greco-Roman style...

Skipping through really fast. We would need to visit the Louvre later to visit the section on Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities, that I am really interested. I am afraid that won't be possible during this trip...