Folks, I'd like to come right out and admit something: I'm a terrible person with whom to go visit a museum.
Me visiting a museum usually goes something like this: I wander around at what would generally be considered an agonizingly slow pace for someone who doesn't share my affinity for history, art, and similar geekiness. My visit is thorough, I like to at least have a look in every room and nook and cranny. I don't stand and read every little informative plaque, but I like lingering. I like wandering. I like listening to what I have deemed an appropriate soundtrack for that museum on my iPod. I like going out and doing things with people, don't get me wrong, but a lot of the time I like walking around museums alone.
So that's what I've been doing. Plus, as you may recall, my art history card gets me in for free to all these museums any time I want, which is FANTASTIC, so I can go around to any of these museums at my leisure.
First up: the Cluny Museum (officially known as the National Museum of the Middle-Ages). This museum was originally the townhouse of the abbots of Cluny beginning in 1334. The abbots were members of an order of Benedictine monks whose abbey is located in Saône-et-Loire, France (southwest of Paris). The building has been used as a public museum since 1833, and is partially built on the remnants of Gallo-Roman baths constructed in the third century (which you can still see and visit).
While the museum has lots of different kinds of objects on display, the thing it's most famous for is its impressive collection of tapestries:
This tapestry, detailing the life of...I want to say St. Stephen? depicts about 40 different scenes from the saint's life. It's broken up into separate pieces and wraps around several rooms of the museum.
The most famous set of tapestries in the museum is a six-tapestry series known as "The Lady and the Unicorn." It was woven sometime in the late fifteenth century. All six tapestries feature the same noble lady and unicorn. Five of the tapestries each relate to one of the five senses:
This is the sixth tapestry, which is larger than the other. It is titled "À Mon Seul Désir," which means "my one sole desire" and features the noble lady either putting her jewelry away in or picking it up from a chest. Some think this is representative of a rejection of earthly desires and passions, especially for material goods, or that it shows what was conceived to be the sixth sense of understanding.
They all hang in the same room under special lighting to help preserve them.
The museum also has lots of other very cool, very old objects. If it existed in a noble's house or in a church in the Middle Ages, there's probably an example of it here.
Game pieces.
Religious golden chest.
Pretty gold flower from the jewelry/small trinket/religious instrument room.
Papal rings! These things are HUGE, not just in their overall size, but in how big of a finger you'd need to get this to stay on your hand without falling off. They'd probably be too big even for my big toe...
Medallion that would have served to hold religious relics, things that people claimed were a few drops of Christ's blood, the Virgin's milk, splinters of the Cross, etc.
Bits of the oldest parts of the building, underneath and beside the main parts of the museum.
There are also tombs down in there. Kinda creepy.
What the main outer courtyard looks like when you first walk in under the outer wall. The open door towards the right is the museum entrance.
The aforementioned outer wall.
The view of the courtyard from the opposite side.
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