The Louvre is big. Really big. And it has some really big paintings. It’s not cluttered, but I kind of wish I could have taken the Segway tour of the Louvre. For my feet’s sake. There were also a lot of people there. We got there Friday morning after dropping our stuff off at the hotel, and the place was packed.

Not only does the Louvre contain a lot of art, but the building(s) and the gallery rooms themselves were often ornate works of art, complete with vast ceiling paintings a la the Sistine Chapel. Upskirt photography fodder for sure. We started at the ground level, where you can walk around the foundations of a recently discovered (1990s) old castle that once stood centuries ago in the center courtyard of the Louvre.

This is one of the funniest things I found about Europe. They seem to be constantly discovering the remains of old forgotten buildings under courtyards, cemeteries, and other structures. It’s not history sometimes until its forgotten and rediscovered, I guess. Given how hyper-recorded the current age is, I wonder whether any present day thing could ever be forgotten enough in order to become a subject for historical research.

So at the Louvre I ended up taking a lot of photos of ceilings by placing my camera on the floor. This became almost a sport for the both of us, sometimes Stephanie pointing out good shots before I even had a chance to look up. With all the people around, we often had an audience, at first wondering what the heck we were doing, and then getting that flash of understanding.

Here’s the inside of one of the glass pyramids.

The ceilings had a lot of gold going on, this one with an epic painting at the center, with bold colors.

They seemed to be fond of painting people floating, maybe because they were on a ceiling?

This painting, part of a much longer multi-painting ceiling, struck me as fairly modern in style, resembling the art I might see in a comic book or graphic novel.

This was at the top of a large staircase.

This does a good job of showing how a ceiling might have multiple paintings and sculptures integrated into it.

And finally one more, not a ceiling shot, but one of the glass pyramid set against the older building as seen through a window, with a few people taking a moment’s rest from the art around them.