Springboards

Monuments

December 14^th. Sunday in Paris. We went up to the highest point around, and one of Ernie’s favourite places – Montmartre. It offers fabulous views over the city. It is also where Sacré-Cœur looks over the city. We went inside the basilica and it is magnificent. The ceiling especially is well worth the visit, but it is so much more than that.

Today I spent several hours at the Louvre. The Palace of Napoleon III is contained within the Louvre and is elaborate to the point of the extreme. I would feel suffocated by such heavy, elaborate furnishings (and short beds!), objects and chandeliers. It looks stunning. It’s amazing that people lived like that, especially those who were part of a system born out of the overthrow of the Monarchy as a result of their excesses.

When I was in Venice some years ago and went into the old palace and saw the gold on the ceilings, huge paintings on the walls, the sculptures, I thought – ‘Here is the wealth of a nation.’ I had at that time recently been in Bangkok and had been amazed at the golden temples and statures. When I was on the Paris hop-on hop-off bus just last Wednesday we had pointed out some golden statues built in the 1930s, a time when the world was in a severe depression. I think of all of the money that goes into building the palaces, monuments, churches and statues of Europe and other places in the world and I wonder how many people’s lives could have been lifted out of abject poverty with that kind of money. What would the result of that be?  How would our world be different now?

But then … we wouldn’t have all those magnificent buildings scattered throughout the world, and we wouldn’t be drawn to them, would we?