Details, Details


Paris was such an interesting combination of large and small.  It's difficult not to be struck by how many enormous and enormously beautiful buildings there are.  And the enormous egos and energies that it took to create them.


Additionally, the amount of detail involved was staggering.  No anonymous, graceless office buildings these, but intricately detailed spaces.


Sometimes it was all I could absorb, the painstaking details of the personal necessity of these spaces.


As we approached the massive facade of the Louvre, I asked my son, "Can you even imagine conceiving of something so massive?  Of designing something so large and in such detail?"


Without a glance to me, his gaze steady on the building all the time, he said, "Yes.  I can."  And I marveled some more.


The top image is a detail from a statue near Napoleon's Tomb; the next two images are of one of the lanterns at Les Invalides, now the military museum.  The lanterns are held by rope that threads through the pulleys attached to the chain; the ropes then run down the wall and into this box, which one would assume contains some sort of crank for raising and lowering.  The ropes appear fresh, though I wonder if they still function as originally intended.  The following image is the interior and exterior windows and interior shutters at the home where Rodin lived and worked; the lion is one of a few on the property.  The last is a column that I can't remember except for its brilliant blue, which has not begun to be captured in this image. 

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