Checking Off the Mona Lisa
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.18.04 | 9:06 PM ET
Most first-time Paris visitors insist on seeing the Mona Lisa—so many, in fact, that on most days a crowd is gathered around the painting by 10 a.m. The Guardian recently featured a terrific overview of the phenomenon, from the crush of tourists to the complicated psychology of a Mona Lisa visit. “To doubt that the Mona Lisa is worth seeing is a bit like asking whether it’s worth coming to Paris at all,” Amelia Gentleman writes. “The Mona Lisa is a key part of the Paris package, and one of the reasons why you come to France, why you come to Europe. For most tourists this moment will be a critical part of their memory of France as a whole. To come here and not be amazed or delighted is in some way to admit that the whole Paris experience is somehow not as great as it’s cracked up to be. Most people know this is illogical, and yet they buy into it anyway.”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
