Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderful Comprehensive Guide, July 18, 2001
We brought this guide with us on our last visit to Paris. We hadn't been to the Louvre before, its size had overwhelmed us. Armed with this guide, we were able to focus on what we wanted to see, and had a wonderful souvenir when we got home. The pictures are tremendous and the section on the history of the Louvre was very interesting. The descriptions of the art itself were, however, frustratingly brief. Also, even though at over 500 pages, the guide is hardly "pocket", it didn't include several paintings we wished it had.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Le Louvre, October 29, 2003
A trip to Paris would be incomplete without a visit to the world's largest museum and probably the most fascinating in the world, the Louvre.The difficulty in visiting the Louvre is that it is overwhelming, as it galleries display over eight centuries of the world's greatest masterpieces.
"The Grand Louvre" is spread over four levels and comprises 30,000 works of art that occupies approximately 1.6 million square feet.s
Furthermore, 645, 000 square feet are dedicated to distinct exhibitions.
Put it very simply, "ouch my aching feet!"
In other words, you can't possibly appreciate these great works of art without a well planned out itinerary.
Here is where a comprehensive guidebook entitled The Pocket Louvre authored by a professor of art history at the Université de Tours, Claude Mignot, can prove to be a godsend. What immediately caught my eye when I thumbed through the guidebook was its practical organization.
Each page contains beautiful illustrations that serve both as a record of works seen and as a capsule of Western art.
However, what is extremely useful is that on the side of each page the author in small print denotes the exact school of the work of art.
Not only are we presented with this information but also Mignot pinpoints the floor and room it is located.
Let us suppose we are interested in viewing the Mona Lisa and we do not want to waste time in trying to locate the painting.
All we have to do is look in the index, find reference to the Mona Lisa "et voilà" we are referred to the appropriate page. We are now told that the Mona Lisa is located in room 6 (Salle des Etats), on the first floor. Furthermore, the author also gives us some useful tidbits concerning this well-known work of art.
With this in mind we can repeat this method when we wish to plan our own trip to the Louvre. On the other hand we can also pursue the various array of tours suggested by the author.
These tours are broken down into various time frames: the three-hour tour, the one-day classic tour and the four half-day comprehensive tours.
When you read the author's comments pertaining to each one of the tours, you actually feel his presence. Other useful features of the book are it's over 500 rich photo illustrations and the numerous gallery floor plans.
The table of contents is quite comprehensive and allows the reader to quickly identify the type of tour he or she may wish to embark upon.
There are also various useful tips such as avoiding lines, where to eat, getting to the museum, where to relax and the various services offered in the Louvre.
We are also provided with a capsule history of the Louvre. Mignot definitely has written a comprehensive guide that is aware of the elements of time and physical endurance that every visitor to the Louvre encounters.
Merci Prof. Mignot! This review first appeared on the reviewer's own site:
www.bookpleasures.com
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Visiting the Louvre? This One May Help..., September 10, 2007
The Pocket Louvre is a professionally rendered small-format paperback with two goals: first, to present a set of full-color reproductions of many of the Louvre's most famous works, and second, to assist the viewer in organizing trips to the Louvre in order to see these works in person. The book does a good job of meeting both goals. Whether you are planning on visiting the Louvre or just want a chance to see reprints of some of the more famous works held therein, you'll likely find what you need here.
The Louvre is a mega-museum so immense in size that it makes some of the world's other museums look like booths at an indoor mall. The building complex is so vast, and the museum's holdings so extensive, that it would easily require multiple return visits over some period of time to even begin to see any significant amount of it in any detail. The buildings themselves which house the Louvre have been added to and reworked over some 500 years, and so any visitor to the gallery (there were over eight million of them in 2006 alone) will be met with sprawling galleries, staircases large enough to hold small homes, interconnecting passages, an underground complex, central eating and shopping areas, and more. It can make the unprepared feel faint of heart and can be overwhelming even if one has visited more than once in the past. The Pocket Louvre helps the visitor navigate through this vast setting by breaking the complex into manageable sections by art genre, and then provides written descriptions of the path to take to see the principal works for each. In addition, the book gives us alternatives: do we want a short, or a long, trip? For each, we are provided directions, suggestions, and even some small-scale maps to help us both plan and execute our trip.
The photos in The Pocket Louvre are first-rate. Images are crisp, clear, with good color reproduction, and because the entire text is on semi-gloss paper, possess excellent overall quality. Because the book itself is small enough to be carried to the Louvre itself, it also means, however, that the photos are small, as well. You'll be able to get a very nice review of the art in the Louvre by reviewing the text, but don't think you are getting a coffee table-sized art book. Nevertheless, the photos are reproduced well enough to enjoy using the book as a virtual tour through the museum, and the descriptions of each, though minimal, are informative enough to help us understand what we are looking at.
A true bargain at its price, and a useful aid for a Louvre visit, the book should be in the library of every art lover, art historian, or past or future Louvre visitor.
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