2001， 2008， 2010， 2014羅浮宮 （Musée du Louvre）
三個館：德農館（Denon）敘利館（Sully）黎塞留館（Richelieu）
鎮館三寶—《蒙娜麗莎》達文西，《薩莫色雷斯島的勝利女神雕像》(德農館1F)，米羅的維納斯(敘利館0F)
著名館藏
《岩間聖母》，《施洗者聖約翰》達文西
《迦南的婚禮》，義大利畫家維洛尼斯（Paolo Veronese）
《拿破崙一世的加冕典禮》法國畫家 雅克-路易•大衛
《自由領導人民》，法國浪漫主義畫家德拉克羅瓦
《美杜莎之筏》西奧多•傑里珂
《拿破崙家族拜訪瘟疫區的雅法》 安東尼•讓•格羅
N代表了Napoleon搶來的。
Four Encounters with the Louvre
四度探訪羅浮宮：從匆匆一瞥到靜心品味
2001, 2008, 2010, and 2014 — Musée du Louvre（羅浮宮博物館）
I visited the Louvre Museum（羅浮宮博物館） four times—in 2001, 2008, 2010, and 2014. Twice I came as the leader of a study tour（遊學團）. Whenever I brought students to Paris, the Louvre was an indispensable part of the itinerary: no journey devoted to European history, art, and civilisation could possibly pass by its doors.
Yet group travel moves according to the hands of the clock. A guide raises a flag, students gather, the bus waits, and the next destination is already calling. We hurried through the galleries, caught a glimpse of the most celebrated masterpieces, took a few photographs, and moved on. I had entered the Louvre, but I had not truly lingered there; I had seen its treasures, but had not yet learned to listen to them.
Only on my later visits, wandering through Paris on my own, did I finally have the freedom to return without a timetable. I could pause before a painting for as long as I wished, follow an unfamiliar corridor simply out of curiosity, sit beneath a vaulted ceiling when my feet grew tired, and allow history to reveal itself slowly.
The Louvre had not changed, but I had. What had once been a required stop on a tour had become a place to which I returned as one returns to an old book—discovering on every reading something previously overlooked.
From Royal Palace to the World’s Museum
從王宮到世界博物館
Before becoming a museum, the Louvre was first a medieval fortress and later a royal palace（法國王宮）. Kings, emperors, ministers, painters, soldiers, revolutionaries, and ordinary visitors have all passed through its courtyards. Its stones preserve not one period of French history, but many layers of ambition, conquest, beauty, and change.
In the Cour Napoléon（拿破崙廣場）, the modern glass Louvre Pyramid（羅浮宮金字塔）, designed by I. M. Pei（貝聿銘）, rises from the centre of the classical palace. Transparent and geometric, it seems at first to challenge the surrounding façades; yet with time, the ancient palace and modern pyramid have learned to reflect one another.
Nearby stands the equestrian figure associated with Louis XIV（路易十四）, the monarch who ruled France for seventy-two years and called himself le Roi Soleil（太陽王）. The statue seen in the courtyard is a modern copy derived from the celebrated Baroque composition by Gian Lorenzo Bernini（吉安·洛倫佐·貝尼尼）, later altered by François Girardon（弗朗索瓦·吉拉爾東）. Before the glass pyramid, the mounted king appears to ride between two ages: behind him, the splendour of absolute monarchy; before him, the openness of a museum belonging to the world.
Three Wings, Eight Departments, Countless Civilisations
三大館翼、八大部門與無數文明
The Louvre is organised around three great wings:
Denon Wing（德農館）
Sully Wing（敘利館）
Richelieu Wing（黎塞留館）
Within this enormous palace, the national collections are organised into eight principal curatorial departments:
Near Eastern Antiquities（近東文物）
Egyptian Antiquities（埃及文物）
Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities（希臘、伊特魯里亞與羅馬文物）
Islamic Art（伊斯蘭藝術）
Paintings（繪畫）
Sculptures（雕塑）
Decorative Arts（裝飾藝術）
Prints and Drawings（版畫與素描）
The Louvre’s collection database contains hundreds of thousands of catalogued works and records. No visitor could hope to see everything, even after four visits. The museum is not a book that can be finished; it is a library of human civilisation in which every gallery opens onto another century.
To enter the Louvre is to cross borders without a passport: from the temples of Egypt to the palaces of Mesopotamia, from ancient Greece and Rome to the Italian Renaissance（義大利文藝復興）, from French Romanticism（法國浪漫主義）to the splendour of the Napoleonic age.
The Three Great Ladies of the Louvre
羅浮宮的三位偉大女神
Most visitors first seek the Louvre’s celebrated Three Treasures（鎮館三寶）. Yet each one represents a very different kind of beauty.
At the top of the monumental Daru Staircase（達魯階梯） in the Denon Wing stands the Winged Victory of Samothrace（薩莫色雷斯島的勝利女神）. Her head and arms are gone, yet she seems more alive than many complete statues. Her marble robes cling to her body as though pressed by a strong sea wind; her wings open behind her, and she appears to have just landed upon the prow of a ship.
There is no face to reveal her emotion, yet her whole body proclaims triumph. Victory does not need to speak. She arrives like wind over the Aegean Sea, carrying the memory of an ancient naval battle into the heart of Paris.
In the Sully Wing（敘利館）, on Level 0（零樓層）, stands the Venus de Milo（米羅的維納斯）. Her missing arms have inspired centuries of speculation, but perhaps her incompleteness is part of her perfection. The serene turn of her body, the soft fall of the drapery, and the calm distance of her expression create a beauty beyond any single age.
She does not invite admiration; she simply receives it.
Then comes the most famous smile in the world: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa（《蒙娜麗莎》）, displayed in the Salle des États（國家廳） of the Denon Wing. During my hurried visits with students, reaching her meant passing through a forest of raised cameras and impatient shoulders. We saw her across the crowd, smaller than many expected, protected behind glass.
On my later visit, I looked beyond the smile. The distant mountains, winding rivers, and misty paths behind her seemed almost as mysterious as her face. Leonardo’s sfumato（暈塗法） dissolves the boundary between light and shadow, certainty and doubt. The longer one looks, the less fixed her expression becomes.
Perhaps that is why people return. The painting never gives a final answer.
Leonardo Beyond the Mona Lisa
《蒙娜麗莎》以外的達文西
The crowds gather before the Mona Lisa, but Leonardo’s quieter masterpieces deserve equal patience.
In The Virgin of the Rocks（《岩間聖母》）, the Virgin, the Christ Child, the young Saint John, and an angel inhabit a mysterious landscape of rocks, water, flowers, and shadow. It is not an ordinary earthly setting, but a sacred grotto where nature itself seems to participate in the divine mystery.
In Saint John the Baptist（《施洗者聖約翰》）, the saint emerges from darkness, smiling almost as enigmatically as the Mona Lisa. One hand rests near his heart while the other points upward, directing the viewer away from the visible world toward something unseen.
Leonardo did not merely paint bodies. He painted the moment when thought begins to appear behind the eyes.
A Wedding Feast Opposite a Quiet Smile
一場盛宴與一抹微笑
Directly opposite the Mona Lisa hangs an enormous work that many visitors overlook: The Wedding Feast at Cana（《迦南的婚禮》） by the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese（保羅·維洛內塞）.
It is the largest painting in the Louvre. Christ’s miracle of turning water into wine is transformed into a magnificent Venetian banquet filled with musicians, servants, noblemen, exotic costumes, columns, balconies, animals, and glittering tableware.
The contrast is unforgettable: on one side of the room, the Mona Lisa offers one private and mysterious smile; on the other, more than a hundred figures celebrate in a blaze of colour and sound.
One painting whispers. The other fills the room like an orchestra.
Napoleon Crowns an Age
拿破崙為一個時代加冕
Before The Coronation of Napoleon（《拿破崙一世加冕大典》） by Jacques-Louis David（雅克-路易·大衛）, history becomes theatre.
The vast canvas depicts the ceremony in Notre-Dame Cathedral（巴黎聖母院） in 1804. Napoleon raises the crown above Joséphine（約瑟芬）, while Pope Pius VII（教宗庇護七世） watches from behind. Velvet, ermine, gold embroidery, military uniforms, and imperial symbols fill the scene.
David was not simply recording an event; he was constructing the image of an empire. Every gesture is arranged, every figure assigned a place, every beam of light serves political power.
Standing before it, I could almost hear the cathedral music and the rustle of ceremonial robes. Yet behind all that magnificence lies a quiet question: how much of history is truth, and how much is staging?
Liberty Steps Out of the Smoke
自由從硝煙中走來
In Liberty Leading the People（《自由領導人民》）, Eugène Delacroix（歐仁·德拉克羅瓦） gives revolution a human form.
Barefoot and bare-breasted, Liberty advances over broken barricades, raising the French Tricolour（三色旗） in one hand and holding a rifle in the other. Around her move workers, students, citizens, and the fallen bodies of the dead.
She is both an ordinary woman and an ancient goddess, both flesh and symbol. Smoke fills the background, but the flag rises above it in red, white, and blue.
The painting does not make revolution clean or gentle. It shows that liberty may inspire the living, but often walks over the bodies of the dead.
The Sea Without Mercy
無情海面上的《美杜莎之筏》
Few paintings in the Louvre carry the emotional force of The Raft of the Medusa（《美杜莎之筏》） by Théodore Géricault（西奧多·傑里柯）.
Shipwreck survivors are crowded onto a makeshift raft. Some are already dead; others collapse from hunger and despair. At the highest point, a man waves desperately toward a tiny ship on the distant horizon.
The composition rises from death at the lower edge toward a last fragile hope above. The sea is enormous, the raft unstable, and rescue almost invisible.
Standing before it, I felt that the painting was not only about a historical shipwreck. It was about humanity itself—abandoned, divided, exhausted, yet still lifting a cloth toward the possibility of salvation.
Bonaparte at Jaffa
波拿巴探視雅法瘟疫患者
In Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa（《波拿巴探視雅法瘟疫患者》）, Antoine-Jean Gros（安東尼-讓·格羅） presents another carefully constructed image of power.
Napoleon reaches out to touch a plague victim while officers recoil and sick men lie in shadow around him. He appears calm, fearless, almost miraculous, as though courage alone could defeat disease.
The work combines suffering with political legend. It glorifies Napoleon as a leader willing to approach danger, yet it also reminds us how rulers use painting to shape the memory of war. Compassion, propaganda, heroism, and death all occupy the same canvas.
Four Visits, Four Ways of Seeing
四次造訪，四種觀看
During my first visits with study groups, I thought the purpose of the Louvre was to see famous works—to locate the Mona Lisa, photograph the Venus de Milo, pass beneath the Winged Victory, and say that we had been there.
Later, wandering alone, I realised that a museum asks for something more difficult: not merely our eyes, but our time.
I began to notice the empty spaces between masterpieces, the footsteps echoing under high ceilings, the changing light in the long galleries, and the tired visitors resting beneath centuries of human ambition. I understood that art cannot always be consumed according to an itinerary. Some works reveal themselves only when we stop hurrying.
The Louvre is far too large to conquer. One should not try. It is better to surrender—to choose a gallery, follow a colour, pause before an unfamiliar face, and allow oneself to become lost.
Across four visits, the Louvre gradually changed from a destination into a conversation. The first two journeys gave me recognition; the later journeys gave me intimacy. At last, I was no longer merely passing through a famous museum. I was listening to Greece speak through broken marble, to Renaissance Italy breathe through shadow, to France argue with revolution, and to Napoleon transform history into spectacle.
When I finally stepped outside, the glass pyramid held the Paris sky in its transparent planes. Behind me lay thousands of years of civilisation; before me, the city continued beneath the same changing light.
I had visited the Louvre four times, yet I still felt that I had only just begun.
