Court painters and Florentine food
Musée de la Vie Romantique
Located at the foot of the Montmartre hill in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, the Museum of Romantic Life (or Museum of the Romantics) is located in what was once a private home originally constructed in 1830. The home belonged to Ary Scheffer, a Dutch-French Romantic painter who had close ties to King Louis Philippe I.
Scheffer hosted salons at the home with visitors including the like of Frédéric Chopin, Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and, later in the century, Charles Dickens and Ivan Turgenev.
The home first became a museum in 1982, when it was known as Musée Renan-Scheffer, and it wasn’t until 1987 that it underwent extensive renovations and reopened as the Musée de la Vie Romantique.
I love the contrast between the details in this woman’s face and the rest of the figure, as a result of the portrait being unfinished.
The museum’s collections include works by Scheffer as well as by his contemporaries. There is also material related to the scholar and writer Ernest Renan — who married Ary Scheffer’s niece — on display.
L’Estaminet
I took a brief coffee break while I waited for the restaurant where I planned to eat dinner to open, as Paris decided to be treacherous and had started to rain. Fun fact, when I saw the name of this spot, there was something about it that was very familiar to me, though I struggled to place it. As it turns out, I had its sister location on my list when I visited Toulouse, though I ended up not eating there.
Pink Mamma
Sprawled across four floors, Pink Mamma is an Italian restaurant which focuses on creating delicious Florentine dishes using freshly sourced ingredients.
I can’t for the life of me remember what the dish I ate was called, but it was pasta and had nuts and mushrooms and I almost cried, it was so good. The tiramisu was up there, too.
Gold Colored Fox 