Free musée day

The first Sunday of the month is free museum day in Paris. We decided to give it a go today, and started with the Museum of the Middle Ages, which is just over the river in the Hotel Cluny. It turns out that it's free every day from Jan-July 2008, perhaps because of the restoration work that's going on inside. Either way, it was pretty crowded, and you can still see the 'lady and the unicorn' series of tapestries, the most famous exhibit. They're pretty good, very vivid colours considering they're over 500 years old, and kind of mysterious since nobody really understands the iconography. My other favourite exhibit was a pre-reformation wooden jesus on a donkey on wheels, used in palm sunday processions.

After a lunch break in a nice bistro at the top of the rue mouffetard (I had bavette, sam had boeuf bourguignon) we tackled the Pantheon - also free today, though you can't go up to the top of the dome until April. Apart from the reconstructed demonstration of the earth's rotation (Foucalt's pendulum) hanging from the central dome, which is enough to justify a visit in itself (the original is in the Arts et Metiers musuem apparently), there are the graves of lots of famous frenchmen - Zola, Hugo, Moulin, Dumas, and at least one woman, Marie Curie, though the flags left on her grave suggest that many visitors are aware of her Polish ancestry.

We just had time to get in to the Musee d'Orsay before closing - the impressionist collection was mobbed with irritating tourists videoing or photographing the works from point-blank range, but there was nobody looking at the wonderful collection of art nouveau furniture. I've decided I want to live in an art nouveau house - you can still occasionally buy one in Nancy apparently, provided you have good connections and rob a bank first.