ISGM

Diane and I spent Sunday at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.  It's been so long since I've been there that it was like I was there for the first time.  It looks like a prison from the outside.  

But, of course, on the inside it's fabulous. 

The courtyard garden is the only place where you can take photographs but it's beautiful enough to make up for not being able to photograph anywhere else.  

If anyone reading this isn't familiar with Isabella or the museum I highly recommend googling her and coming here when in Boston.  She was a huge patron of the arts in the early 1900's, built this museum to resemble a 15th century Venetian palace, and then left strict instructions on her death that the art needed to stay exactly where she placed it.  The Gardner Heist in 1990 is still unsolved and there is an empty frame where the painting once hung (but we couldn't photograph it).

With the glass roof there are blooms all year round although they do rotate the plants seasonally.  I loved this freesia!

And I always love orchids.

Medusa is in the center of the courtyard mosaic.  The myth is that if you look at Medusa in the face you turn to stone and so there are stone statues all around the garden who met that fate.

Diane and I managed to remain flesh and blood.

Di's panorama came out much better than mine (and not because I'm in it!!)

We weren't sure if we were supposed to take pictures in this spanish grotto off the courtyard but we managed to get a few shots.  This grotto was built especially for this painting.   

The grotto is filled with over 2000 tiles that ISG placed herself.

THere was one other place we could take pictures - the bathroom!!  I love the green flowered stall doors - is this the new trend, to have funky pattered stall doors (see yesterday's post)??  If so, I like it!

We had the perfect day….now I want to go back EVERY MONTH!!! :-)