chazhuttonsfsm: The Six-Minute Louvre. Whist...

The Six-Minute Louvre.

Whist giving some poor travel advice to a friend on what to do in Paris when you’re strapped for time, I remembered ‘The Six-Minute Louvre’ which I’d vaguely remembered hearing about a while back. After a bit of searching I realised it originated from a very funny, tongue-in-cheek article written by Art Buchwald in 1974, who had perhaps been inspired by the recent breaking of the four minute mile. It’s worth a read (the original is here):

Louvre Champ 20 years later.

PARIS - One of the main reasons I came back to Pris was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the breaking of the six-minute Louvre. It was exactly 20 years ago today that a young American student named Peter Stone amazed the world by going through the Lourve museum in five minutes and 19 seconds.

As everyone knows there are only three things worth seeing in the Louvre museum - the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa - the r est of the stuff is all junk.

For years tourists have been trying to get through the Louvre as quickly as possible, see those three things, and then go out shopping again.

Before World War II, the record for going through the Louvre was 7 minutes and 14 seconds. But after the war, as clothes got lighter and camera got smaller, people kept cutting down the time, and in 1948 a man known as the Swedish Cannonball, paced by his Welsh wife, did it in 6 minutes and 12 seconds. For the first time there was serious talk of breaking the 6-minute Louvre.

But is was to be four more years. On June 18, 1954, Peter Stone, under perfect tourist conditions literally flew through the Louvre, around the Venis de Mile, up past the Winged Victory, down to the Mona Lisa and back out again into a waiting taxi. He achieved the impossible, bringing fame and wealth to himself and glory to his country.

President Eisenhower personally sent him a telegram which read: “I rejoice with all Americans at your amazing feat. You’re what the United States is all about”

So here I was 20 years later at the Louvre museum with Peter Stone to relive that great moment in history.

Stone, now middle-aged, paunchy and slightly gray, went unrecognized by most of the tourists who were going through the Louvre. As we went over the same course he noted, “It’s all different now. There are very few American tourists anymore, and it’s only a matter of time before the Japanese will take the record away from us”

“Peter, I was there the day you broke the six-minute Louvre,” I said, “I remember you telling me at the time that you were going to do it, What made you so sure?”
“I had discovered something that nobody else knew,” he said as we walked around the Venus de Milo, “and that was you didn’t have to pay admission on Sunday mornings to get into the Lourve. In that way I could cut 20 seconds from my time. The second thing I did was leave the film out of my camera. I carried less weight than other tourists. Finally, I had developed a non-skid sneaker in the States so I could make the sharp turns around the Winged Victory without slipping on the marble.”

We walked up the marble staircase past the Winged Victory.

“This is where I made up 30 second,” Peter said. “Most tourists look at the back of the Winged Victory, but I said to myself ‘If you’ve seen one Winged Victory, you’ve sen them all,’ and I just whizzed by without stopping.”

“what did you do after you broke the six-minute Louvre?” I asked Peter.
“I did some exhibition running at the Prado in Spain and the Tate Galery in London. The Russians invited me to run through Memitage in Leningrad. It was the first time a Soviets had ever asked an American to race through on of their museums. But it was during the height of the Cold War and John Foster Dulles wouldn’t let me do it.”
“So here it is 20 years later. What happens to a Louvre champ as time goes on?”
Peter replied: “The legs go first, then the wind and finally the eyes, I doubt if I get through the Louvre in 10 minutes now in any condition.”

We arrived at where the Mona Lisa hung when Peter had broken the record. The picture wasn’t there! I asked an old guard, “Where is the Mona Lisa?”
The guard shrugged his shoulders and replied: “In Japan.”
Tears came to Peter’s eyes as he said: “It figures.”

(Art’s attendance of the 40th Anniversary of the record is also worth a read) - also, the image above is from the film Bande à part by Jean-Luc Godard. Here’s the scene in question,