Palais Royal and Galerie Vivienne

After lunch I headed over to see the Palais Royal, which is on the north side of the Louvre. The Palais contains Daniel Buren's site-specific artpiece, Les Deux Plateaux, known as Les Colonnes de Buren.

The gardens were well groomed and loaded with flowers, fountains and the rigidly groomed trees. Smart shops surround the courtyard and in one of them,  Charlotte Corday, purchased the knife she used to stab Marat.  Here are a few pics.

As you exit out the courtyard of the Palais Royal you are close to entering a unique example of the covered passage- an 18th century version of the shopping mall.  Enclosed under wrought iron and glass, these passages contained restaurants and markets.  Like the one in the Latin Quarter I found and put in an earlier post, this one has a wonderful enclosure and a uniqueness of space.  The Galerie Vivienne is amazingly well-preserved and renovated in comparison to the other.  The marble tiled floor is applied in a mosaic fashion  The space also contains potted plants and trees illuminated by natural light creating an incredible space.