There Are More Than Three Items in the Louvre

After nearly four weeks of avoiding it, we finally visited the Louvre.  The world's largest museum is probably also one of its most crowded, and we decided to try to wait out the summer tourists and get our art fix once the kids went back to school.  The plan mostly worked, as we didn't have to wait in line to enter (the lines can be hours long), but there were still plenty of people jockeying for position around the museum's three star attractions: La Joconde (Mona Lisa), Venus de Milo and Winged Victory of Samothrace.  Visitors were practically throwing elbows in order to get the "perfect" shot of the Mona Lisa.  I found them more interesting than the painting itself. I'm fairly certain that approximately one third of the Louvre's visitors make the rounds to see just these three pieces of art, take their pictures, post these pictures on Facebook with the caption "I <3 the Louvre!" before venturing to the gift shop to buy overpriced postcards featuring the same three pieces of art and then leave the museum.

In front of the Mona Lisa

I don't remember who sculpted this, or what it is called, but I do remember that it is awesome

We made the requisite rounds, and then headed across to the other side of the Louvre to the Richelieu Wing, which was far less crowded.  In fact, the Near Eastern Antiquities felt nearly empty, which was great because it has some of the most interesting objects in the whole museum (to me, at least), including my favorite - the nearly 4,000 year old Code of Hammurabi.  We also walked through Napoleon III's apartments, which were a good appetizer for our later trip to Versailles, and then spent some time in the Dutch and Flemish painting section.  That was enough museum time for me, even if we did avoid most of the crowds.

Code of Hammurabi (which is covered in engraved rules like, "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" and, "if during an unsuccessful operation a patient dies, the arm of the surgeon must be cut off")

The capital of a column from the Palace of Darius, which gives a good idea of the palace's size