Europe Travel Destinations

A trip to Paris, France won’t be complete if you won’t go to the Louvre Museum, or locally known as the Musée du Louvre. It is actually one of the most visited museums in the world.

The museum holds some of the most valuable pieces of art by the greatest masters of all time such as works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Jacques Louis David, Delacroix and Alexandros de Antioch among others.

If you wish to visit this place, you may need to allocate a day or to for you to really appreciate the work of the masters. And yeah, you get to see where the Da Vinci Code was filmed.

The place is accessible by taking the train and dropping of at Palais Royal – Museé du Louvre Métro Station.

Source: Wikipedia, The Louvre

Located in the heart of Paris is the Louvre palace which houses the national Museum of France we all know as the Louvre. The palace started out as a fortress that was built by Louis XIV who instead chose to reside in the Palace of Versailles thus leaving the Louvre Palace to house the many Royal Collections that include sculptures form some of Europe’s greatest artists till the French Revolution when it was designated as a museum for all of France’s national treasures. The palace has been extended many times over to accommodate the growing collections secured within it’s walls, it first opened its walls as a museum in 1793 but was closed a few years later due to structural concerns of the palace. When it re-opened in 1801, the collection was greatly increased during the time of Napoleon who aptly renamed it the “Musee Napoleon” and the collection grew to it’s current strength of eight curatorial departments namely; Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Islamic Art, Sculptures, decorative arts, paintings, prints and Drawings. All of which coming form all corners of the world showcasing a menagerie of talent and genius the world should see.
The Museum has a part of it’s medieval structure left intact to show it’s past and heritage giving way to the modern exhibit halls that shows off works of great masters such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and more. Featured in many films as the famed The DaVinci Code and many more, the Louvre continues to play it’s part in mystery and beauty as it shows us the beauty that has been produced by some of the most brilliant minds of all time.

Image source: www.susanmilne.com
Mainly of Alaska’s glaciers are retreating or thinning or mutually, a new book by the U.S. Geological Survey news.

About 5 percent of Alaska’s area is enclosed by more than 100,000 glaciers — that’s about 29,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers), or more than the entire state of West Virginia.

While a few of Alaska’s large glaciers are advancing, 99 percent are receding, the book, “Glaciers in Alaska,” states. The book was written by USGS examine geologist Bruce Molina.

A USGS project to take pictures of the glaciers of Montana’s Glacier National Park also showed significant retreat. Based on these photos and glacier recession rates, scientists envisaged the park could lose its namesakes by 2030.

Greenland, which is covered by more ice than somewhere else in the world outside Antarctica, has also seen significant melt of its glaciers in recent decades.

The new book on Alaska’s glaciers used satellite images, aerial photos, maps and other studies to document the retreat of the glaciers, which began as early as the mid-19th century. Some glaciers have even disappeared since being mapped in the mid-20th century, the report found.

The account also said that glaciers in Alaska saw “important retreat” in the last two decades of the 20th century.