Leaving the crowds behind

If your only free days are weekends and you start hyperventilating in crowded places, then I suggest staying well away from any large institutions of culture in Paris. Instead, if you’re looking to experience something arty and cultural, you have three options: staying in and making your own art, leaving the city for the weekend to discover la culture Provençale, or possibly exploring some lesser-known museums in the city.

Although those first two options are perfectly legitimate, here I shall help you to explore the third by highlighting some very worthwhile spots which don’t tend to draw such large Parisian weekend crowds.

 

Halle Saint-Pierre – Outsider Art

This unassuming building barely 2 steps away from the hill of Montmartre looks like it might harbour an indoor market or perhaps a school; and indeed it used to be both of those things before it got turned into an exhibition space for Art Brut et Art Singulier, (primitive and singular art, also widely known as Outsider Art). Established in 1986 by publisher Max Fourny, it shows exhibitions of naïve, folk and outsider art from all over the world, has a lovely little library worth browsing, and also hosts concerts, conferences and literary events. Amid the bustling streets of Montmartre, this little gem is often a quiet(ish) getaway, transporting you into a space of otherworldly art.

 

Musée Cernuschi – Asian Art

Near the lovely Parc Monceau, in a residential area in the north of the city, you may come across the Musée Cernuschi, the 19^th century neoclassical home of the Italian founder and collector Henri Cernuschi. Inaugurated in 1898, it is one of the oldest museums in the city, and the second largest Asian art museum in France. Inside, the space is bigger than you might imagine, with around 900 Asian art objects on display. You can explore this free permanent collection in chronological order, browsing the displays which centre on a period starting from the Neolithic through to the 13^th century. Alternatively, you can combine this with a visit to whatever beautiful temporary exhibition happens to be on.

 

Musée Dapper – African Art

Hidden away a few streets from the Arc de Triomphe, this place strikes a contrast with its bourgeois surroundings. It’s a little 2-storey museum dedicated to African art, which shows themed exhibitions often bringing together century-old artefacts and contemporary creations. If it’s an area you feel unfamiliar with, the museum offers individual and group tours, and there is a bookshop and auditorium where you can see plays, performances and children’s shows. The topics are often fascinating and the curation is excellent, yet this is a little-known place where on busy Paris weekends you are likely to only hear the sound of your own footsteps echoing in the galleries.

 

Institut du Monde Arabe – Islamic Art

The Louvre recently re-opened its Islamic Art collections, but until then, the best place in Paris to go and indulge in Islamic art was the Institut du Monde Arabe, and if you prefer to avoid queues and crowds, it still is. Housed in Jean Nouvel’s remarkable building overlooking the Seine which is now also home to a semi-permanent exhibition structure by Zaha Hadid in the courtyard, the place is worth visiting just for the architecture and the views. Inside, the Musée des civilizations is a historical journey through Islamic culture, whilst the contemporary art collection and temporary exhibitions (which draw the most visitors) focus on 20^th century offerings from the Arab world.

 

Musée de la Chasse – Art and Nature

An alternative to the child-filled Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, to give it its full title, was conceived to remind visitors of the relationship between man and animal since antiquity, with a focus, as the name suggests, on hunting. Opened in 1967 and recently renovated, the museum is housed in a stately home in the heart of the Marais district. From ceramic objects, prints and coats of arms, to sculpture and painting, the museum displays only some of the three-thousand hunting-themed objects in the original collection alongside contemporary installation pieces. You may find it bizarre, you may find it eclectic, but I guarantee you won’t find it dull.

 

Maison Européenne de la Photo – Photography

Perhaps one of the best places in the city to see top-class photography exhibitions is the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. There are multiple floors, each often dedicated to multiple artists, or sometimes hosting one or two larger retrospectives. Don’t forget to go downstairs into the old cellars-come-exhibition spaces, take a break in the little cafe and explore the nooks and crannies of this beautiful building. There is usually a good variety of photography styles and periods on offer, so you’re likely to see something you like and perhaps discover a new and intriguing artist.

 

Marais Galleries – Contemporary Art

Finally, if you’re in the Marais district, consider skipping the tourist-hub of the Pompidou Centre, known to Parisians as Beaubourg, and go a-wander through those wriggling medieval street in search of some fresh contemporary art. There is lots to see, especially in the area near and around the Place des Vosges to the East. Don’t be afraid to walk into these small, intimate spaces and engage in conversation with the art and the gallerist. These galleries may be quieter and more intense than a museum, but they also offer a more personal and face-on experience with contemporary creations which can be surprising, terrible, inspiring, or all three at the same time. You never know what you’ll get, but at least it’s sure to be free. Bear in mind though, many of these smaller spaces will be closed on Sundays so plan accordingly.

 

So there you have it, those are my suggestions. Paris is a big, cultural, art-loving kind of place so I’m sure there are many more spaces I haven’t thought of. I’d love you hear your opinions if you know of some good crowdless weekend haunt!

How to get into the Louvre

Ok, so you’re in Paris and you’d quite like to see the Mona Lisa without queuing for two hours – what are your options?

First of all, you should know that there are two lines to wait in: first to get your stuff checked through an X-ray machine like at the airport, second to get your tickets. The rooky mistake is to start standing in the first line you see, which will likely be that in front of the big glass pyramid in the court. It’s the one all the silly tourists gravitate to and inevitably the longest. There is a second principal entrance through an underground passage which leads from the Metro and the Rue de Rivoli. This will take you into the same main atrium with all the ticket stands but with slightly less waiting.

The security checks can’t be avoided, but if you want to skip the ticket lines just get your ticket in advance! You can buy these online, for example on parisinfo.com or ticketmaster.fr, in a FNAC which sells concert tickets, or even in the little Tabac shop hidden in the shopping corridors which lead to the Louvre’s underground entrance. In any case, there are lots of ways to avoid the main ticket queues in the atrium of the pyramid.

Although, if you’re under 18, a student, or under 26 and an EU citizen and you want to get in for free, you may have to queue with everyone to show your ID and get your free ticket. Sometimes though, it’s worth just going up to one of the entrance points to the galleries and showing them your ID to let you in. This seems to work better some days than others. There are probably some rules governing this, in France there always are, but I have yet to fathom them.

Then, (and I’ve kept this gem of information until now) there is a separate, smaller, much less known entrance to the Louvre, situated at the Porte des Lions on the East wing of the museum towards the Seine. There is rarely anybody there, I have strolled through many-a-time when hundreds formed a line in front of the pyramid. What’s more, it’s situated right under the Italian Renaissance section, giving you quick and direct access to the Mona Lisa. Bizarrely however, this entrance is sometimes open, sometimes not. On the Louvre’s website it currently mysteriously states that “this entrance may be closed for technical reasons”. And you can’t access it in groups. Still, definitely worth a shot.

And what to see once you’re in there? Well that’s advice for a future post…

Visiting Museums (or the joys of Parisian culture)

When we lived in Paris, my husband and I used to go out for walks on the weekends in the hope of doing something arty and cultural like visit one of the city’s numerous and excellent museums. We would walk through the Latin Quarter, past the Musée de Luxembourg, down through Saint-Germain to the Musée Maillol and over to the Musée d’Orsay, then across the Seine to the Orangerie, the Jeu de Paume, perhaps up to the Petit Palais or down to the Louvre.

As we strolled by each of these museums on a sunny Saturday, we would gaze in wonder at the long queues that lined the pavements, the shuffling masses with bored expressions or eyes glued to their phones; and we would contemplate the sights and sounds inside these houses of art: the hordes of visitors, the obstructed views, the pushing and shoving, moaning and grumbling – the true Parisian experience.

Long gone were our student days when we had the luxury of only a short wait on a Wednesday morning in front of the Pompidou Centre; sometimes we could even stroll straight into the Cinémathèque’s museum, look at the pieces on display in quiet solitude. Little did we know what we were missing out on. For indeed, the real, French person’s Paris is the Paris of the weekends, of packed parks, of congested roads, and of largely inaccessible museums.

“Oh if it weren’t for all the tourists!”, you might cry out, but you’d be wrong. Paris may be the most visited city on the planet, and the Louvre the most visited museum, but by and large the weekend crowds in front of the Grand Palais, and other such less touristy destinations, are composed of the French themselves. The problem is this: the French are far too cultured.

They are the kinds of people who will take their perfectly behaved little children, dressed in flannel shirts and corduroy trousers, to contemplate, and perhaps draw in their little notebooks, the pieces in the latest exhibition of 5^th century Chinese art at the Musée Guimet. They will happily (or grumpily) stand in line for 2 hours to see those Tim Burton drawings at the Cinémathèque; they will prod and shove for the privilege of pressing their noses against a display case containing a newly restored Medieval manuscript at the Louvre. Then they will talk about it whilst dreamily swirling wine in their glass over dinner.

I could barely believe my luck when in America I could walk right up to the ticket counter with no more than a 5-minute wait to enter a museum ON FREE EVENINGS! Such an experience would frankly be unimaginable in Paris unless there were to be an outbreak of the Plague. The last thing I would advise anyone to do would be to attempt going to the Louvre on the free first Sunday of the month. Unless your idea of fun for a day is standing in line and observing the minutiae of the back of other people’s heads.

This year, the Louvre decided to cancel the free Sunday during high tourist season (April to September) since too many foreigners were profiting from it, whereas the locals, I imagine, were staying well away. The point of the free museum day was always to democratise culture, allowing everyone in France to access the best museums for free, tourists were never a major consideration. In fact, on the free day, the Louvre’s daily attendance would swell from a usual 20,000 people per day, to up to 80,000. Le Monde, one of France’s premier newspapers, reported on this policy change in an article starting with the phrase that so often echoes through the busy streets of Paris: ‘Salauds de touristes!’