The Louvre is fantastic and, to my way of thinking, it is I.M. Pie’s Pyramid that makes the museum great rather than just a huge old building stuffed with iconic art (I.M. Pie being an out-of-town architect, of course).  Stuck in the middle of the Cour Napoléon, between the wings of the Louvre complex, the Pyramid provides a Grand Entrance and, more importantly, a crowd dispersal and distribution system. The Pyramid also brings the museum complex to life and it is fun to see our fellow tourists interact with it. After hours of wandering through galleries of famous paintings memorializing once famous people, often behind crowds of smartphone photographers, we came to the Wedding at Cana by Veronese. It is, of course, famous for showing the first selfie, a once famous nobleman taking a selfie with the eternally famous Jesus. I have been taking pictures of the Madonna and Child statues that decorated the entrances pre-Renaissance churches and cathedrals because the variety of interpretations and expressions fascinated me, but I was overwhelmed by the number of Madonna and Child paintings at the Louvre. Most were great, some familiar from long-forgotten history or art books, and many showing a very white Jesus.  The Louvre has a huge collection of Egyptian artifacts, most looted from Egypt during Napoleon’s conquest and towards the end of the day, we wandered into that area to see for ourselves. I’m glad we did but, while the sheer amount of artifacts the French looted is disturbing, the quality of the Egyptian sculpture, much of it over 3,000 years old, is the most shocking. This is representational art, not archetypical, and the feelings evoked by seeing real people, over three thousand years old – holding hands or with an arm around a loved one’s back – is chilling.