Paris in the country

Paris in the country

A museum curator to whom I confessed how much I like looking at Paris from the windows of the Louvre—toward the Pont des Arts, the Église Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, the Temple de l’Oratoire, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel—confided in me she shares the same vice. Do not think it a waste to go to the Louvre and look out the window: the eye has to rest between the works. The museum curator added that her favorite prospect is the one from the Rubens and Flemish painting room just north of the Galerie Médicis (Richelieu, room 802). I hurried to it as soon as she finished giving me a tour of her department, and I was not disappointed. The view of Paris from the windows of this Flemish painting room is surreal. The rooftops of the Palais Royal conceal the Right Bank arrondissements all the way to Montmartre. The boulevards, the Grands Magasins, Opéra, the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est—an entire swath of the city vanishes, and Sacré-Cœur, which seems close at hand, rises from the greenery like a country church. Seen from the Louvre, abstracted from the city, the Sacre-Cœur even looks almost beautiful.