My trip to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi!
Today we're going to, you guessed it, another museum! After all the hype built up around it, and the fact that it's a museum (which I love), I felt that it was only fair that this post I go to Abu Dhabi and visit the Louvre. Now if you don't live in the UAE or you've just been under a rock for the past year you might be saying, "Wait a minute, isn't the Louvre in France?" You would be right, obviously, but now there is a second. The Louvre in Abu Dhabi is the product of a partnership between the UAE and France. Construction started in 2007 with help from seventeen of France's most renowned museums and historical societies, and the great architect Jean Nouvel. The museum is the first of its kind in the Middle East and (as I'm sure you've gathered) is a pretty big deal. It is located in the Saadiyat Cultural District on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, and it is one of the biggest undertakings that has ever been attempted in the UAE right alongside the Burj Khalifah in expensiveness and build time.
When you visit the Louvre the first thing that you notice is the dome, which is made out of over 2000 stars linked in different patterns forming eight layers, inspired by the leaves of a palm tree. When you get there you park your car and walk though the fence-like walkway and into the main entrance. Upon entering there is a security bag checking station which is expected for a place with so many rare artifacts. You then go on to buy your ticket at the reception desk (unless you already bought yours online) and once you're done with that you are through. You come into an open sitting area with the gift shop right next to you, and a place where you must drop of any large baggage before entering. They let me take in my camera bag but my sister had to store her backpack in the baggage area, so if you don't need a backpack just don't bother bringing one.
Once you have dropped of your bag and gotten your ticket you walk through a doorway where they have a nice lady scan your ticket and send you into the actual museum. Now before I get into talking about the museum and our experience there I just want to mention that I absolutely loved it. It is hands down one of the best if not the best museum I have been to and definitely in the top three places that I have visited on this blog as of right now. Alright with that out of the way, let's talk about the Louvre exhibitions; there are 4 "wings" which are basically sections, and 12 "galleries" which are smaller offshoots of the wings, with each gallery having its own smaller offshoot rooms.
The first room we walked into is marked on the map with a tan-ish color and it basically displayed a bunch of different artifacts that represent the same thing from different societies. I know that's a mouthful and you probably have no idea what I just said, so I'll give you an example and a few pictures so you can get the general idea. So there were about 6 different showcases in this big open room and each show case had three little artifacts in it, each from a different part of the world but all depicting the same concept. For example the first picture is of three statues of ladies with babies, one from Africa, one from Egypt, and one from Europe, showcasing the importance of women in each of those societies. I apologize for spending so long on the one room but it's one of my favorites so I wanted to make sure you understood it.
So with that lengthy explanation out of the way, we move on to wing 1 which has the really old artifacts, mostly from Greece, Asia, and Egypt. This wing contains my personal favorite room which is the bottom right room in the green colored wing on the map, and it is all about the ancient Egyptian burial and mummification process. I like this room for a few reasons; I like seeing and hearing about ancient burial rituals and the way this section was made was very clever. The room in which these were displayed was almost completely dark and in order to see the artifacts you had to enter a maze-like area with low walls coming up to about chest height, giving you the feeling of actually being in a tomb or burial site.
Wing 1 also contains the gold room with a few gold artifacts including the amulet that was "borrowed" from the museum in RAK, and gold coins displayed in front of the mind boggling, eye catching, and just plain stunning -- infinite mirror.
Wings 2 and 3 are full of interesting artifacts, paintings, and other show cases that are too numerous to talk about individually, but my personal favorites include a painting of George Washington, a statue of the Mayan god Kukulkan, a mosaic of a Roman man, a cross with a reliquary (piece of the original cross) in its middle, the sword belonging to the last sultan of Al Andalus (Muslim controlled Spain), and this "feline" attacking an Aztec warrior.
Wing 4 is the last of the official wings and it focuses pretty wholly on modern art. This wing contains the fourth and final of my favorite rooms/galleries which contains some modern art creations such as two or three paintings, a wall piece made of several gears, and the centerpiece -- a monument made of 12 different working chandeliers. This wing also contains one of the coolest things in the whole museum in my opinion, an orange juicer made of several random things like a tricycle, a wood plank, bicycle tires, and a handful of other random things.
After we were finished with the main wings and galleries there were only two places left to visit: the limited time Japanese art gallery, and the manga lab. The Japanese gallery was not very impressive to me, it was really just more of the stuff that was displayed in the museum itself, attempting to tie it in to the modern world. On the other hand the manga lab (which is a separate room not affiliated with the temporary Japanese gallery) was very cool. The manga lab is basically a moderately sized room based around, you guessed it, manga, with VR headsets in the middle taking you through a real life manga experience; arcade games to the sides with different Japanese street fighter games; and sitting areas in the corners with multiple manga books to read. On top of all of this the walls were also covered in black and white manga scenes and they had markers in little holders that you could use to draw whatever you wanted on the walls. Of course I left a few marks of my own, including a cheeky PewDiePie meme that will appeal to all the nine year olds reading this.
All in all I had an amazing time at the Louvre, as I mentioned earlier in the post it has definitely taken a spot in my top three places that I have visited for this blog, and it is a good contender for my favorite museum ever. It would be unfair to overlook the pricey tickets, but they regularly have deals and coupons, so if you can find a way to go there and afford the ticket I would say it is more than worth it. Anyway hope you all enjoyed the Louvre, go see it yourselves and check back in two weeks from now for my next exciting adventure!