Sampling a Museum Buffet

‘This is like Disneyland on a weekend,” the woman shepherding two teens said as they joined the line to buy tickets to the Louvre. At least they were indoors on this frigid January morning. The line stretched almost to the platform of the Louvre-Rivoli Metro (subway) station, one of several entrances to the vast museum. I breezed past the line and flashed the “museum card” I’d bought on my first day in Paris.

Why don’t more tourists know about this card, which lets the holder bypass ticket lines? And why do so many first-time visitors to Paris think they have to spend a day on the Louvre? Its collection is wonderful, but also overwhelming-thousands of works of art spread over four floors and a couple of miles of corridors. And ranks of bobbing heads usually crowd in front of the celebrated “Mona Lisa” and Venus de Milo.

I’ve made many trips to Paris, and I’ll share a tip: To get closer to the arts that define France, visit some of the dozens of small museums in the city. Most of them are in tourist-familiar neighborhoods, near Metro stops and surrounded by cafes, bistros, shops and, in many cases, lovely parks for resting one’s feet.

The Museums and Monuments Card, issued by the Association InterMusees, admits you to most of them for one price-85 francs, or about $13-per day, without a wait in line. The card is good at more than 70 museums and monuments, including the Louvre ($6.50 regular admission) and the hugely popular (also ever-crowded) Musee d’Orsay ($5.50) as well as the Eiffel Tower ($3 to $9) and such curiosities as an apartment Lenin lived in and museums celebrating the postal service, the hunt and hand-held fans.

Here are a couple of my old and new favorites.

Cluny Museum

The Cluny-officially, Musee National du Moyen Age-Thermes et Hotel de Cluny-is a secret treasure in plain view. Its rear wall runs along the frenetic Boulevard St. Germain in the Latin Quarter, a neighborhood thick with centuries-old schools such as the Sorbonne and their ultra-moderne student populations.

A Gothic residence, the Cluny looks a bit forbidding, especially on a gray winter day. But inside is “the Lady and the Unicorn,” a brilliantly colored set of large 15th century tapestries. In each, the lady is in a garden, accompanied by a mythical unicorn, symbol of purity, and a lion, symbol of virility. Five of the panels depict the five senses, and the lady’s sensual enjoyment is evident.

The sixth panel is ambiguous in meaning, showing the lady and a motto that translates “to my sole desire.”

Beyond the gallery dedicated to the tapestries lie rooms and corridors displaying treasures from the Middle Ages.

In the basement, the Cluny gives way to the Thermes, the Roman baths on which the medieval mansion was built.

Outside, I took a break in the tiny park in front of the museum, where a man and a woman who looked like volunteers were pruning rosebushes. I sat on a bench to watch and to devour my favorite Parisian snack, a coffee eclair, from a bakery on the Boulevard St. Germain.

The Marmottan

For us devotees of Impressionism, Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet is ground zero, home to some of the very best works of the man whose painting “Impression Sunrise” gave the 19th century revolution in art its name. (The Marmottan does not honor the museum card; admission is $5)

More than 100 Monets are in this collection, but on my visit the exhibit was limited to a series from the artist’s garden in Giverny, expansive works that shimmer across the walls in lavender, mauve, fuchsia and all shades of blue and green.

The Marmottan collection includes a generous sampling of a dozen Impressionists, a fine overview if you don’t have time or patience for the hundreds of other Impressionist masterpieces in the Musee d’Orsay.

The Marmottan was built as a private home in the early 1800s in the still-elegant 16th arrondissement, in western Paris. Like the Cluny on the opposite side of the city, it has two personalities.

Monet and his friends are in bright, unadorned rooms upstairs. On the ground floor is a collection of furniture and decorative arts from the First Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Here a marble bust of Madame Mere, Napoleon’s formidable mother, presides over silk-clad walls and parquet floors, furniture decorated with motifs inspired by her son’s conquest of Egypt and Italy, and portraits of her children reigning as kings and queens. The atmosphere is stiff, formal. I had the feeling that any moment Madame Mere might hiss disapprovingly at me for wearing jeans and tennis shoes.

It was time for fresh air-and lunch. I crossed the pretty Ranelagh park to Chaussee de la Muette, a street close to the Metro. There, La Rotonde, a typical brasserie, was serving a fine, simple lunch of salad and quiche for about $12.

City Museum of Modern Art

For lovers of modern art, the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg) is the first stop in Paris. Like the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay, it is huge and often crowded, and even less comfortable for aimless wandering. Searching for an alternative, I discovered the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Fittingly, the museum is housed in the Palais de Tokyo, the architectural little cousin of the better-known Palais de Chaillot (Trocadero) a few blocks west on the Seine. Both were built for the 1937 Universal Exposition in a similar layout: two wings around a vast open terrace that descends to the river. They’re worth a visit just for their splendid view across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower.

Over the years, the city museum has assembled an inimitable collection of the Paris School: the dozens of artists who worked here mostly in the ‘20s and ‘30s. They all knew each other, and their impact on one another’s work is obvious in many cases.

The collection has something for every taste, ranging from artists who came after the Impressionist first wave, such as Matisse and Cezanne, to contemporaries of ours, like Keith Haring. The Cubist section is particularly impressive.

I was drawn to Cezanne’s portrait of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, far more somber and thoughtful than Picasso’s better known portrait of him. Three Bonnards, one depicting the artist’s wife in the bath, illuminated their wall with coruscating color.

One thing about this museum I found especially stimulating: the numerous art students sketching, talking, all giving off energy.

Style and Costume Museum

Across from the Museum of Modern Art, on Avenue du President Wilson, is a collection worth a quick stop and the $5 admission: the Musee de la Mode et du Costume de la Ville de Paris. This museum dedicated to the art of fashion is housed in the Italian Renaissance-style Palais Galliera, built for the Duchess Galliera at the end of the 19th century to house her collection of Italian art. Unfortunately for Paris, the duchess bequeathed the art to the Italian city of Genoa. But she left her little palace to Paris, which uses a small part of it for revolving exhibitions of an eclectic collection of fashion-related art and crafts. The day I was there, the main exhibit was of hand-printed cotton toile, fine as silk, brought from India and worn by Marie Antoinette.

The Guimet

The French empire once girdled the globe, and Paris has museums celebrating the art and style of almost every conquest, from Asia and the Pacific to Africa and the Arab world. One of my never-miss favorites is the Musee National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, which is just west of the Modern and Galliera museums on Place d’Iena, one of the city’s major star-shaped intersections where seven avenues converge.

The Guimet is home to Europe’s largest collection of Buddhist art, and a recent renovation has made it easy to enjoy.

I lived in India for several years and am fascinated by the variety of art the Buddha inspired across centuries and cultures. On this visit, I was enchanted by a group of Chinese Tang Dynasty funerary figures arranged like a child’s doll collection. Some of the little clay statuettes of court ladies in red and white striped dresses and puffy hairdos bent in dance steps, while others concentrated on the instruments they played.

In a gallery nearby was a sample of the museum’s fabulous collection of silk scrolls and wall hangings, sculpture and pieces of murals that French explorer Paul Pelliot brought back in 1909 from the Silk Road in Central Asia.

Arab World Museum

Back across the Seine, on the Right Bank, is the starkly modern Musee de l’Institut du Monde Arabe. It’s at the eastern end of Boulevard St. Germain. Just below it on Quai St. Bernard is the Musee de Sculpture en Plein Air. This wedge of riverfront park is filled with large contemporary sculptures by 29 artists, created mostly in stone, steel or aluminum.

The tall, narrow institute is a work of modern art itself, built in 1987. It’s mostly glass-walled, and the south wall is sheathed in decorative metal screens inspired by the wooden screens of North African homes. They are electronically programmed to open or close with the changing ambient light like the iris of an eye.

Inside, the museum’s three levels trace the heritage of the Arab world from pre-Islamic times to the present. I was intrigued by one of the more modern exhibits, a display of 19th century carpets. One of them, woven by Kurds of Azerbaijan, depicted a small town in minute detail; every house had a camel in the front yard and a duck in back.

The institute is known for the splendid view from its ninth-floor restaurant. I got the same panorama for free from a rooftop viewing platform, and I ate frugally but well in the cafeteria next to the restaurant: A salad bar of five varieties was only $6. My eye kept wandering to the dessert buffet, but I was saving myself for mint tea and baklava in the tearoom of the Paris Mosque.

The mosque, a 15-minute walk from the museum on Rue Jussieu and Rue Linne, was built in the 1920s and includes steam baths-hammam-that are open to men and women on different days.

For $50 (the bath alone is $13), I was made to feel like one of the odalisques immortalized by several French painters. Deep within a warren of hot and cold rooms, pools and fountains, I lay on a heated marble platform, soaked in eucalyptus-scented steam and dandled my feet in a cold plunge pool. I was scrubbed by a woman who looked like a wrestler, then polished by an oil massage. When I emerged, a wintry blast made me glad my hotel was only a five-minute walk away.

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Guidebook: The Art of Paris

* Musee National du Moyen Age-Thermes et Hotel de Cluny, 6 Place Paul Painleve, 5th arrondissement; Metro Cluny-La Sorbonne. Local telephone 5373-7800. Open 9:15 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; closed Tuesdays. * Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet, 2 Rue Louis Boilly, 16th arrondissement; Metro La Muette. Tel. 4224-0702. Open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; closed Mondays. * Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 Avenue du President Wilson, 16th arrondissement; Metros lena, Alma-Marceau. Tel. 5367-4000. Open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

* Musee de la Mode et du Costume de la Ville de Paris (Palais Galliera), 10 Ave. Pierre-Ier de Serbie, 16th arrondissement. Tel. 5652-8600. Metros lena, Alma-Marceau. Open 10 a.m.-5:40 p.m.; closed Mondays. * Musee National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, 6 Place d’lena and 19 Ave. d’lena, 16th arrondissement; Metro lena. Tel. 4505-0098. Open 9:45 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Tuesdays.

* Musee de l’Institut du Monde Arabe, 1 Rue des Fosses St.-Bernard, 5th arrondissement; Metro Jussieu. Tel. 4051-3838. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Mondays.

* Tip: Museums and Monuments Card admits you to more than 70 of them, including the Louvre, without having to buy separate admission tickets. It’s good for one, three or five consecutive days ($13, $24 or $35) and is sold at the museums, Metro stations and Paris tourism offices.

* Internet: For facts about the museums and everything else a visitor needs to know-restaurants, hotels, and a Metro map-see the Internet site https://www.paris.org or https://www.paris-touristoffice.com.

* For more information: French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-2967; tel. (310) 271-6665 or (410) 286-8310 (France-on-Call hotline), https://www.francetourism.com.