
On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower of inaugurated.
On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower of inaugurated.
This past year while a lot of tourist attractions have been closed, museums have been putting their collections online for people to peruse from the comfort of their homes.
A couple of weeks ago, the Louvre announced their database of more the 480,000 works from the Musée du Louvre and Musée National Eugène-Delacroix are now available online.
The nice part is that the information pages may include multiple photos of each work of art and if currently visible at the Louvre, where it’s located at…for when you’ll next be able to visit that is.
The pages are in French, but if you use Google Chrome or the latest versions of Safari, the browser should be able to auto-translate pages for you.
Visit the Musée du Louvre Collection at https://collections.louvre.fr
It should probably not be a surprise that I love French patisseries. It’s great to see this three part video looking behind the scenes of the magic of the workers making everything from scratch and fresh ingredients.
I’m a huge fan of seeing photos from France in Paris in the distant past and 100 years ago is amazing to see how much is different and how much hasn’t changed.
These colored photos by Jules Gervais-Courtellemont will take you back through time to see how Paris looked in 1923. The vivid images are produced using the autochrome technique in which the plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue colored potato starch grains (about four million per square inch).
When the photograph is taken, light passes through these color filters to the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce positive transparency. Light, passing through the colored starch grains, combines to recreate a full-color image of the original subject.
I have to say, the one thing I miss when I’m not in France is the ability to walk down the block, hand over one Euro and receive a Baguettes de Tradition. These are the baguettes that are protected by French laws in how they can be made and how much they can be priced at. They are made simply from flour, water, salt and yeast. The most basic food you can make and it’s delicious either plain or adding butter and ham.