The Ara Pacis Museum 

Every time we are in Rome, K and I stop by the Ara Pacis, a museum built around a 2,000-year-old altar dedicated to the goddess of peace.

The altar itself is a never-flagging source of pleasure. Enclosed, as it now is, in an enormous steel and glass box makes it somehow better. (As you can imagine, the ultra-modern enclosure – part of a massive redesign of the museum – was controversial from the moment it opened in 2006.)

The museum is currently exhibiting a retrospective of the work of Robert Doisneau, the French photographer that produced those iconic black and white images of Paris between 1930 and 1950.

Like this one…

I love retrospectives like these. They give you the opportunity to see the scope of an artist’s work over a lifetime. It is always informative, and sometimes helps you understand why and how his/her reputation developed.