The Story of the Great Heist, Told While You Wait in Line

You've finally made it to the Mona Lisa. The line might look long, but it moves faster than you'd expect — so while you wait, here's a story worth hearing.

Even from the closest possible spot, you have to stand at least 3 meters back to view the Mona Lisa. With so many people crowding in, keeping that distance is a matter of safety, and the painting itself is protected behind bulletproof glass. There's one more reason for such heavy security, though: the painting was actually stolen once.

In August 1911, the Mona Lisa was in its place when the museum closed for the evening — and gone by the next morning. The thief eluded capture for a long time, making front-page news with a reward offered, and curiously, Parisians who'd never paid the painting much attention before suddenly flocked to the Louvre just to see the empty space where it used to hang. Among the suspects hauled in for questioning was none other than Picasso, largely because he was a frequent visitor to the Louvre and had once bought pieces from an obscure artist who'd stolen them from the museum.

Picasso, of course, wasn't the culprit. The real thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian who had briefly worked at the Louvre. He reportedly stole the painting out of resentment that an Italian masterpiece was sitting in France. Security was so lax at the time that smuggling it back to Italy proved simple enough — but the painting's very fame turned out to be his biggest problem. For two years he kept the Mona Lisa hidden under his bed, unsure what to do with it, before finally approaching the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to sell it. The director, aware of the theft, alerted the police, and Peruggia was arrested. In court he claimed he'd only wanted to return the masterpiece to its rightful homeland, but the plea didn't spare him prison. After two years away, the Mona Lisa returned to Paris and has remained here ever since.

Theft wasn't the only close call. In 2018, French President Macron announced plans to send the Mona Lisa on a nationwide tour to boost regional museums. Curators pushed back hard — the painting is on a 500-year-old wooden panel, and moving it risked damage from humidity and weather. Add in the enormous security costs of transporting it and the near-certain drop in Paris tourism if the Mona Lisa left the Louvre, and the opposition proved strong enough that Macron eventually scrapped the plan.