A Slow Day

A Slow Day

I admit that I generally avoid the Salle des États (711), where visitors move in one-way lines between the crowd-control barriers. Today, mid-week, you can enter through the exit. That’s because fewer people are pressing towards the Mona Lisa. Barely a hundred visitors stand packed between the long retractable-belts. I don’t know who invented this system, but the patent must have made them a fortune. For tourists, it must be pleasant to come to the most famous painting in world (I dare say) and find the same retractable belts that channeled the flood of passengers when they arrived at the airport, and a wait-time barely shorter than at passport control. All, or most, of them take a picture of Mona with their telephones held high above the heads of the people in front of them, even though better reproductions are available online. But it is a matter of commemorating their real presence, keeping evidence. The picture will probably never be shown (everyone knows the Mona Lisa) but it pays homage to Leonardo, to Mona, and to the Louvre.