Bathrooms

Bathrooms

Entrance hall - Pyramide

For the past year, I’ve made it a habit to enter the Louvre two or three times a week via the Passage Richelieu. It’s the shortest way, coming from home, and the view of the sculptures in the Cour Marly and the Cour Puget never fails to charm me. As I descend the escalators toward the vast entrance hall beneath the pyramid, I also never fail to glance at the very long line for the ladies’ bathroom. Across the hall, the men’s room is less heavily besieged. I’ve tried to calculate. Close to half an hour before getting one’s turn. Since the average length of a Louvre visit is an hour and a half, I hope the wait for the bathroom is not included in the total; but apparently the tour operators begin their circuit by asking their groups to relieve themselves, before anything else. Bathrooms are a big deal in museums. There are never enough of them. To tell the truth, one finds bathrooms almost everywhere around the Louvre. For most of them, there’s no line at all. You only have to look. Or just to consult the maps handed out at the entrance. I’ve never found the door closed at the one on the second floor of the north Sully wing where I’ve become a regular, between rooms 913 and 914 of French seventeenth-century painting. If I’m giving the secret away, it’s out of charity toward the poor ladies waiting beneath the pyramid.