With temperatures forecast to be 37°C, today was the day to duck into a museum.
After a lazy start, popping into the local bakery for a baguette and supermarket for other food, I took the bus to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Lille’s museum of fine arts. It was one of the first museums built in France. The museum opened in 1809 under Napoleon Bonaparte. It fell into disrepair in the 1990s. Renovations were completed in 1997, during which a basement was added.
The building is beautiful. Architecturally, it’s a monumental late-19th-century Beaux-Arts building in the French Neo-Renaissance style.
On entering, I saw these patterns on the walls. I thought it was a novel way to decorate this building. It reminded me of the Louvre in Paris when the modern pyramid was added to the old building.
The museum itself was mostly art from the middle ages. There was some things that were interesting. A small impressionism section was better.
In the basement, which looked like a monastery, were mainly religious works. The huge relief maps (“plans-reliefs”) were unusual. These seem to be a French thing. Kept in semi-darkness, the maps depicted various French, Belgian and Dutch towns, such as Calais, Lille, Ypres, and Maastricht.
On getting to the main hall, which is not visible at the entrance, I noticed that the patterns on the wall weren’t just patterns. When viewed from a specific location, each pattern (black, blue and red) combined to produce a larger geometric pattern. It was ingenious!
I left the museum about 5.45pm and it was still hot outside. I’d bookmarked an unusual cafe, La Wilderie, which also sold plants. I settled down with an iced latte and a peanut butter banana cake.
At 7pm, when the cafe shut, I walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park surrounding the Citadelle de Lille. I thought I could go into the citadel but it turned out to be a military complex!
