The coolest house I've ever seen

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was our destination for the day. We spent an entire afternoon perusing the collections. I enjoyed it so deeply, I'm afraid Nathan grew tired of my constant adulation towards the art.

To save time describing the unique history behind the museum, here's an address instead:
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/the_museum/introduction.asp

Copy that to a new tab and explore a bit. In a very small nutshell (think sunflower seed), she made a museum that would in itself be a work of art. This was also her home. She made three levels of galleries and lived on the fourth floor. This was her life's work.

The personality and eclectic nature of the collections can't be described, you'll just have to visit someday. This was my first time in a real art museum. I was so eager to admire these masterpieces that I grew impatient with the tour and would often sneak away from the talkative group to look at other paintings while I listened. This was my first time seeing works by Rembrandt, Botticelli, Titian, Whistler and Vermeer. I was in heaven.

The architecture itself is noteworthy. The entire home was built to include her collection of architectural elements from medieval and Renaissance-era European churches and castles. She literally bought entire walls of churches and shipped them to her home in Boston. There's a large open courtyard in the middle of the home and each pillar surrounding the yard is from a different building. In her will, she said nothing could be rearranged in her collection, so everything is exactly the way she left it. It's delightfully eccentric. Here's an example: she imported a Roman tile mosaic for her garden. It has the head of Medusa in the middle of the mosaic. Naturally she surrounded the Medusa with a collection of stone statues. Fantastic! She also brought stained-glass windows from churches and built them into her studio. It's so amazing to see how she incorporated all these contrasting elements into one delightfully fun place. If you have time to see one thing in Boston, make it this museum. It's the most-visited museum in the entire area.

We spent 3 or 4 hours there. It really made me want to fill our home with art and not worry about whether it's conventional to blend different styles in the same room. I can't afford to collect great art, but I can work on creating some pieces myself. I'm really looking forward to working on a few pieces this summer when life calms down a bit. we'll see if that actually happens. :)