Leonardo grabs the headlines, Apollon wins my heart

Leonardo da Vinci draws superlatives like pollen pulls bees, so it's no surprise that the Louvre went big on the marketing of its current show. It was supposed to be the biggest, most insightful, most comprehensive of all the many exhibitions put on to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of the ultimate Renaissance Man. Most tickets sold out well in advance. The hype is so big that this coming weekend ... the last of the show's run ... it will be open 24/7 from Friday morning to late Monday afternoon. And as a special treat, if you go between 9pm and 8:45 am you get in for free.

Fascinating idea. And, maybe, if you went at 4am you might actually have enough space to enjoy it. Because with normal attendance, even with the Louvre supposedly limiting numbers by time slots, the crowds were so intense it made the whole experience profoundly uncomfortable. As a consequence, even though there were some remarkable items on display, we enjoyed our time wandering around the Louvre's regular galleries more than our claustrophobic visit to this "landmark" exhibition.

The show is undeniably impressive. Leonardo may be one of the most famous artists in history, but his output was tiny: there are just 24 complete or nearly complete paintings attributed to him by general agreement. Some can't move (such as the Last Supper, since it's painted on a wall) and many are so valuable that either their owners won't take the risk of letting them travel, or the insurance is prohibitively expensive. By getting 11 of Leonardo's total on the exhibition's walls, with the Mona Lisa upstairs and available on the same entry ticket, the Louvre has worked some impressive magic. (Although if you caught the National Gallery's Leonardo show in 2011, you probably saw the better effort.)

You can't have a major exhibition with just 11 paintings, of course, so the curators have expanded the show with Leonardo's drawings ... which remain in numbers as prolific as his paintings are sparse ... works by his teacher and contemporaries he influenced, copies, works by his students, and true-to-size x-rays of both paintings in the exhibition and some that couldn't travel. You're advised of this from the very beginning, when the major work that greets you isn't a Leonardo but a monumental bronze of Jesus and doubting Thomas by Andrea Verrocchio, his teacher. (Legend says Leonardo modelled Thomas' foot.) The show is, essentially, exploring the whole "ecosystem" of Leonardo.

It's always a delight when exhibitions bring you items you may never see on your own, thus I particularly appreciated the Madonna and Child from the Hermitage. Leonardo did many variations on this theme, however, and my favourite item in the whole exhibition was the Lansdowne Madonna, which has emerged from a private collection and was once owned by the same family that gave their name to, and once lived in, my club in London. The painting is exquisite and I love the personal connection. It hangs next to another version called the Buccleuch Madonna, and it's great fun to compare the two. The X-rays are fascinating and, in the case of the Mona Lisa, arguably more interesting than the painting itself (top photo). My biggest smile came from an old friend: Verrochio's Tobias and the Angel, which usually hangs in London's National Gallery, and features a ghostly, half-completed, shaggy canine reputedly by the young Leonardo that's one of the great dogs in art. I've always loved the idea that dogs are angels' best friends as well as man's.

There are 160 marvellous works to see here, but the density of the crowd made appreciating them an

endurance test rather than a joy. It was particularly frustrating in the room that was primarily drawings, arranged in long rows of display cases with narrow aisles in between. The scrum was so intense we skipped the whole section. This is a shame, as many art critics will tell you that the most intriguing masterpieces lay there. But I've been lucky to see a lot of Leonardo drawings in my life (the majority on display here come from the Royal Collection in Windsor), and I just wasn't up for the physical fight needed to see these.

When you know you're going to be packing the crowds in, putting so many things that require close study in low cases with limited access was a poor curatorial decision. A higher hang of the major paintings would also have created a better line of sight over the shoulders in front of you. They could have learned a great deal from the designers of the King Tut exhibit I saw in London earlier this year.

The curators could also, one assumes, have put a tighter limit on numbers and raised the ticket cost. At €17, Leonardo was priced well below the £20 - £25 of most major British exhibitions, and came with the added benefit of admission into the rest of the Louvre. Which normally costs €17. Bafflingly good value for money. Perhaps too good?

Though Leonardo should have been my highlight of the day, that honour belonged to the Galerie d'Apollon in the Denon wing. This jaw-dropping, gold-gilt blockbuster of a room dates from the time of the "Sun King" Louis XIV and was an artistic trial run before he commissioned the similar, but even grander, Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. You won't be missing anything with this version, however, but the people. The room has been closed for 10 months for renovation and even when open it's off the natural route through the Denon wing, so many people miss it. (I've spent many hours wandering the Louvre and I never knew it was here.) While still full of appreciative visitors, it's nothing like the crowds in Leonardo or the even more horrific body-to-body crush at Versailles. You have time and space to take it all in; though the human brain has a hard time processing this much grandeur.

The hall is 200 feet long, its barrel vault almost 50 feet above you, and its walls and ceilings are covered with paintings of mythological allegory, great battles and portraits of the artistic worthies of France, surrounded by an astonishing array of life-sized, nearly three-dimensional stucco figures, all covered with gold gilt. Few spaces in the Louvre deliver as potent a reminder that this was once a royal palace.

If you can tear your eyes away from looking upwards, you'll find that the room holds some of the greatest treasures in the museum: Louis XIV's collection of objects made from semi-precious stone and what's left of the French crown jewels. Given France's penchant for revolution, it's amazing any of this stuff survived, much less ended up in the same room.

There's only one crown here from the monarchy before Louis XVI lost his head, as the rest of his stuff was broken up during the political upheaval that followed. The regimes after that seem to have over-compensated for their feared inadequacies, much to the modern viewer's benefit. Louis Philippe presented his Bourbon queen with a set of diamonds and Sri Lankan sapphires that is the stuff of fantasy. The Empress Eugénie’s crown is a masterpiece of emeralds, diamonds and golden eagles with raised wings. Her diamond brooch is comprised of stones so big it's hard to believe they're real, though the refracted rainbows sparking out of them thanks to small, cleverly placed spotlights leave no doubt.

The Sun King's stones may seem humble next to this bling, but they are extraordinary in their own right. Lapis lazuli, malachite, agate and rock crystal have been painstakingly carved into goblets, bowls, boxes and other lovely little objects, then accented with gold and precious jewels. Any one of these would be a priceless treasure in most museums. Here, they're fighting with the architecture to get noticed. It's sensory overload, and it's glorious.

The Denon wing is also the home of a magnificent Roman sculpture collection, the galleries featuring the enormous history paintings of Jacques Louis David and Leonardo's most famous work, the Mona Lisa.

She hangs in the middle of an enormous gallery dedicated to the Italian Renaissance. The Louvre has recently renovated the gallery and instituted a new queuing system to see her. There's now an enormous one-way route so you can only enter the gallery through one door, and leave through the other. She hangs higher than before, so people who don't want to wait can see her from a distance. There's an amusement park style chicane of barriers organising the shuffling file of hundreds, who all wind their way forward to get their requisite selfie with the most famous painting in the world. Few of them bother looking at the rest of the gallery to see Veronese's monumental Wedding at Cana (for me, the best painting in the room) or the wall of luscious Titians. This isn't art appreciation, it's tourists ticking boxes.

I'm glad I had a chance to see the Leonardo exhibition. Seeing the Mona Lisa "live" is better than consuming her through thousands of tacky reproductions. But what my day at the Louvre really reinforced is that in this era of social media-driven tourism and uncomfortable over-crowding, the less appreciated experiences, off the beaten track, can be more meaningful than the "must sees".

Odd but enjoyable, the Moulin Rouge keeps drawing the crowds

There are few nightlife spots as legendary as the Moulin Rouge. Whether through the paintings of
Toulouse-Lautrec, Baz Lurhmann's rollicking musical, shadowy stories of intrigue during WWII or reputation as the birthplace of the can-can, most people are aware of this Paris landmark. I suspect fewer realise that the place is still going strong nearly 130 years after its founding.

When it opened its doors in 1889, the Moulin Rouge gave Paris' rich a place to "slum it"; opulent luxury and racy entertainment in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods. While today's Pigalle is no slum, it remains a somewhat dodgy red light district and the club's prices are still for high rollers. The show with dinner is €195; the evening's second, late performance without food is €97.  Prices are marginally cheaper on weeknights. Most nights sell out. A full house is 850 seats. Though the show's costumes and sets are lavish, this production has been running since 1999, so one assumes those costs were recouped long ago. It's a family-run business, and they own the building. Contemplating the profits is an eye watering exercise.

Having sat through the show, I'm a bit surprised they're still packing in the crowds. The production is curiously old-fashioned. You'll see better quality dancing and hear stronger voices in a London West End musical. (I suspect this isn't actually down to the talent of the performers, but the fact that they've been doing the same show twice a day since they started and there's an element of "going through the motions"). But there's quirky charm that makes the experience utterly unique, as do the magnificent surroundings. And there's no cabaret in the world with this provenance. You're at the source, and the ghosts of history are thick around you.

The experience is part old-style Vegas show, part Cirque du Soleil and part theme park production. With breasts. Lots and lots of naked breasts. At times is was almost comic, as lovely costumes had panels awkwardly cut out to tick the boob requirement. When I was a child, I believe this kind of thing was big in Vegas and called a "topless review". Those shows are long gone from The Strip but thriving at the Moulin Rouge. It seemed a bizarre contradiction in these days of #metoo and gender equality, but it was hard to get offended when most of the dancing was about as sexy as a Disney Princesses parade.
I did, however, find myself a bit irritated at the lack of parity in costuming. While the troupe of 60 women was parading around showing off most of their assets, the 20 or so male dancers left almost everything to the imagination. Why didn't I get to appreciate more six packs and taught thighs instead of cheesy sequinned suits? Hey ho.

The evening starts in an enormous queue. With tables packed at high density and 850 meals to be served in just over an hour, management has seating down to an art form; it's a bit like boarding a plane. The audience enters into an enormous, characterless lobby space next to the original club. You're released in small groups to go single file through a narrow door into the original lobby, and then down a plush red concourse to be seated. There are various price levels and group bookings obviously go through various resellers; I suspect prices, proximity to the stage, menus and alcohol shift accordingly.

We booked through Viator on Trip Advisor, which was able to offer dinner show tickets when the main Moulin Rouge web site was sold out. It was only a few euro more expensive than the direct price and featured transport back to any hotel in the Paris city centre. (Tip: If your plans are flexible we saw that Viator drops the price of unsold tickets on the evening of the show in their Place de la Concorde office, from which the excursion departs. Swing by here between 5:30 and 6 and you may get a last minute deal.) Without discounts, the evening is roughly the equivalent of good seats in the stalls of a London show, plus a top-quality pre-theatre dinner, and pre-show and interval drinks at the theatre. Is it worth it?

Yes, for a one-time experience, though I wouldn't return.

You do, to be fair, get two shows for the price of one. As everyone is getting seated and having dinner there's a band on stage with two excellent singers. Ironically, rather than delivering expected classics like La Vie en Rose and La Mer, the tuxedo-clad crew is sliding out Vegas standards from the Rat Pack and Nat King Cole. It just didn't seem right to be perusing a lovely French menu as the chanteuse rolled into "well it goes from St. Louis, down through Missouri, Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty..." 

I was pleasantly surprised to find a menu with options rather than the uninspiring banquet food you might expect with these numbers. We could choose between tuna tataki, beetroot chutney and beetroot salad or a rabbit terrine for our first course, hake on black rice or chicken with roast vegetables for the main and a pear charlotte or chocolate and caramel cake for dessert. The price included half a bottle of wine per person, with a choice between champagne, red or white and the ability to move between them if you have enough people at your table to be opening and sharing full bottles. The food was uniformly excellent, far better than any of the bistros we dined at over the weekend. Service is fast and efficient, and surprisingly personal despite the huge numbers.

The Las Vegas Lounge singers wrap up and a solid barrier comes down on the stage with carefully timed precision as the desserts start to hit the tables. This gives you a few minutes to properly appreciate your rather extraordinary environment. It's not quite a Baz Lurhman set, but he was clearly working from reality. The decor is fin de siecle France meets tart's boudoir: burgundy with lavish accents of gold, striped fabric draping the ceiling, little lamps with shades on all the tables keeping the overall lighting low. Wall paintings around the edge of the auditorium recall the glories of the past in styles much inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec.

Though there are some tables for two tucked away around the back edges of the auditorium, most of the seating is at long, narrow tables of eight or more radiating out from the crescent of the stage like rays from a child's drawing of the sun. Each consecutive circle of tables sits on a curved terrace above the ones below; it looked like everyone would have an excellent view. Tables went right up to the stage on the side but there was an intriguing rectangle left clear in the middle. Clearly, the show would be projecting into the audience.

The main show consists of four "scenes" interspersed with guest acts. The scenes are long musical numbers that tell a story, almost like mini-musicals with custom written scores and different "stars" called out of the line-up. Costumes are a very big deal; there's a lot of promenading to the music as you appreciate the feathers, sequins and breasts. The first, "The Moulin Rouge Yesterday and Today", and the last, "The Moulin Rouge from 1900 to ..." are remarkably similar, other than the fact that the last is the one that has the obligatory can-can number. The second, "The Pirates", is pure Disney, with princesses pining for love, dancing corsairs waving their blades and even a love duet with a turbaned prince and princess flying over the audience on wires. Very Aladdin.

Within it there was also this bizarre scene with a bunch of priestesses at a snake temple ... one of a handful of places the choreography does get quite sexy ... who are preparing a victim, with heaving naked breasts, naturally, for sacrifice. Up from the centre of the auditorium comes a water-filled glass tank roughly the size of a small suburban pool, filled with large boa constrictors happily swimming. In goes the "sacrifice" to swim for a few minutes with the snakes as the music reaches its crescendo. I hate snakes, so was torn between keeping my eyes closed until it was over and watching the double drama of the girl in the pool and the stage hands keeping her companions from escaping as they slithered over the tank's rim.

The third scene, "Au Cirque" was probably the best for pure entertainment value, combining some truly magnificent circus sets with wonderful costumes, comic clown acts and the 60-girl chorus line in some of the most magnificent of the night's costumes. The other noticeably "not for children" act was here, when a borderline-dominatrix "lion trainer" was working to bring a pack of very sexy lionesses under her control in a fairly steamy dance number.

And yet moments later we were back to Disney as a troupe of dancers dressed as jockeys promenaded around with adorable miniature horses.

Despite the fame of the Moulin Rouge's dancing girls, it's the guest acts between scenes that are most impressive. There's a contortionist who winds her body into knots with ease, seeming to defy both the laws of gravity and the existence of a skeletal infrastructure. Two brawny acrobat-cum-gymnasts do a series of moves with lifts and balances that take the combination of grace and strength to an extreme. Most memorable, however, is a male-female roller skating act. The couple perform on an elevated, circular stage perhaps 10 feet across. In this tiny space they manage to work up remarkable speeds, then do seemingly death-defying spins and lifts, moving at high speed and always seemingly just a few inches from plummeting off the edge of their circular stage. Both the contortionist and the female roller skater did their acts fully clothed.

The main show runs from 9pm without a break and wraps at 10:30. Everyone's encouraged to leave promptly as the staff turns the table settings with a blinding speed to match the skaters'. The next performance starts at 11 and the punters are already lined up in that lobby next door. The show goes on. And, I suspect, will keep going on for many years to come, despite ... or perhaps because of ... its odd feeling of being frozen in time.

No photography is allowed inside the Moulin Rouge, so I've borrowed these publicity shots from their web site. To get the full effect, you'll need to imagine a layer stripped off the girls' costumes. The web site, amusingly, gives no hint at the show's distinctive USP.

Rugby, Montmartre and 25 Hours brighten up a grungy Paris

Songwriters may love Paris in the springtime, but on a grey, rainy weekend in February there's a lot less poetry about the place, particularly given current levels of rubbish, graffiti and homeless people.

It's been almost six years since the last time we were in Paris, and the city has changed noticeably. I'd always considered it to be cleaner than London, but no more. Discarded papers and packaging blew down streets in most neighbourhoods. Go out when shops are closed and you'll see that most security blinds have been defaced by street "artists". The graffitti isn't just in marginal neighbourhoods. I spotted several defaced walls on the Left Bank overlooking the Île de la Cité, in buildings likely to house multi-million dollar apartments.

Most surprising were the homeless. Around the Gare du Nord and Montmartre we saw them established on full-sized, filthy and rain-sodden mattresses, looking like they were long settled. We saw obviously homeless people sleeping on the ground in metro stations or riding trains to stay warm. Tragic bundles of humanity huddled in doorways in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, amongst some of the world's most expensive galleries and antique shops. While London has a significant homeless problem, they don't seem to be as obviously established in the middle of traffic patterns as those we saw in Paris.

Though the city looked grubbier everywhere we went, I confess that three days of rain and staying just across from the Gare du Nord probably gave us a disproportionately grim view. Neighbourhoods around train stations are inevitably a bit dodgy, no matter how hard they push their urban renewal projects. Someone's clearly been putting effort in around here since my last visit, since the station's grand facade is now spotlessly clean, artfully lit and fronted with new civic sculpture. Ignore what you see on street level and it's quite magnificent.

The 10th arrondissement may lack the charm of my usual preferred bolthole in the Marais, but if you're coming from London by train ... and if your primary objective for the weekend is a rugby match at the Stade de France ... you can't beat the location. And if you want to stay around here, I'd recommend the 25 Hours. It's an enormous hotel within the Accor chain in a classic 19th century building, immediately across the street from the station's main entrance, but it feels neither corporate nor traditional. In fact, they've somehow managed to pull off the feel of a boutique hotel despite having hundreds of rooms.

The decor is North African fusion with hints of Asia and industrial chic. A minimalist front desk also has the feel of an African or Caribbean market, with craft items inspired by the hotel's design for sale and a coffee and pastry stand to one side. Upstairs, hallways are an eye-popping fuschia, rooms are decorated in bright primary colours and vivid batik prints. The rooms are well-lit (often a problem in old building renovations) thanks to fun exposed bulbs and signage, mattresses are deep and pleasantly firm, there are surprisingly large shower rooms and even more surprisingly large TVs with sharp definition. The whole place is flooded with high-speed WiFi. The first (American 2nd) floor has a cocktail bar with a cool vibe, an extensive drinks menu and a live DJ on weekend evenings. There's a lounge area with a big communal table for people who want to hang out outside of their rooms and ... the big boutique-y touch ... a table with typewriters and printing stamps where you can write and post a love letter to whoever you're missing.

This floor also features a family-run restaurant called Neni that served up the best meal we had the whole weekend. It markets itself as Persian-Arabic-French-Russian fusion, but I'd simplify that by putting it in an eastern Mediterranean category. Think hummus, babaganoush, spiced lamb. I had their Jerusalem chicken platter; think fajitas, but the grilled chicken and peppers were served on a pillow of silky-smooth hummus and served with the best pitta bread I've ever had. We didn't get to Neni until our last night, when we'd exhausted all the most likely-looking bistros in the street. Had we started there, we would have been back.

I hadn't done any restaurant research before the trip, because the primary objective of the weekend was a simple one: rugby. Typhoon Hagibis had cancelled the France v. England match to which we'd had tickets during last year's World Cup, so getting to the same match up in the 2020 Six Nations tournament seemed like an excellent Christmas present for my husband. (It also gave me the chance to go to Paris' much-publicised Da Vinci exhibition. Of that, more later.)

If you get in on the day the tickets go on sale at the Stade de France you can get tickets direct from the venue. I missed this window so bought tickets through rugbyticketservice.com They're highly professional, with frequent communications and an emergency number if anything goes wrong. It's still stress-inducing, however, to be using a reseller when the official tickets warn so prominently against it. And, of course, you're paying double the price. Best to be more organised in the future.

If you were an England fan, the result was disappointing but the experience of seeing a game in the Stade de France fantastic. This is entirely different from the carnival-like atmosphere of seeing an away game in Rome, where visitors outnumber Italians. The French take their rugby seriously and the huge stadium (2nd largest in rugby) was sold out. The stadium managers are a canny lot, laying a French tricolour across each four seats and seemingly not selling seats to visiting fans in blocks. I'd guess there were at least 15,000 English fans there but they melted into the sea of beret-wearing, flag waving French. La Marseillaise is one of the world's great national anthems, and hearing it sung with passion by tens of thousands is a cultural highlight on par with ascending the Eiffel Tower or eating a classic French meal.

English fans were far more obvious around the Gare du Nord before and after the game, where bar and bistro owners ran up both nation's flags and invited fans to celebrate or eat and drink away their sorrows. Nobody seemed to care that it was Brexit weekend and the UK had just left the union ... save for one bar owner who mentioned it as excuse to drink with him, whatever your feelings. Business, rugby and tourism seem to flow despite government disputes. Over the weekend we tried the Terminus Nord, Au Baroudeur and Le Bouquet de Nord. All offered standard French bistro fare, tasty but unexceptional. Terminus Nord probably has a slight edge with its art deco interior and fresh seafood, but it's the most expensive of the three.

Staying in this neighbourhood also puts you within walking distance of Montmartre, the obvious sightseeing choice if you want something close and easy. This 130-metre hill is the highest natural point in Paris, made even more prominent because it's topped with the high, triple domes of the Basilica of the Sacre-Coeur. The fit can hike it but we took the funicular up and a taxi back to the hotel. The view from the top is spectacular; arguably better than the one from the Eiffel Tower because the tower is in it.  (Top photo.)

The church itself is worth a wander ... particularly for its mosaics ... though is much more modern than most people think. It was only dedicated in 1919, though planning started in the 1870s. Amusingly, it was conceived as an enormous public penance for 100 years of decadence that, the founders believed, led God to allow defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Part of the decadence was also the revolt of the Communards (French proto-communists, not the '80s pop band), so city government felt perfectly justified evicting hundreds of undesirables ... lefties, artists and the like ... from the land to build the church. And so you end up with an enormous monument to the establishment and conservative values in the heart of Paris' most alternative neighbourhood. No wonder construction took so long.

The streets winding down the hill from Sacre-Coeur are a jumble of picturesque architecture housing restaurants, boutiques and galleries. This is picture-postcard Paris. The main square here is packed with caricaturists and artists selling the same sweet scenes your grandparents might have brought home in the 1950s. This may be the neighbourhood of Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani, but don't expect edgy stuff in the streets; that's on the gallery walls.

An older generation of artists was also associated with this neighbourhood: Monet, Renoir, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. The last is more closely associated with a little place at the bottom of the hill called the Moulin Rouge. And that establishment really needs its own story...