How The Mona Lisa Survived The Second World War
Does the Mona Lisa have a rival in terms of notoriety? Once before, during WWII, it was stolen from the Louvre and never recovered. The director of France’s National Museums, Jacques Jaujard, came up with a strategy to keep the collection safe from the Nazis. He closed the museum for three days “for repairs” after the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Non-Aggression Pact on August 25, 1939. All of the artwork was removed from the walls, the statues were relocated, and wooden crates were used to transport it. Red dots denoted the importance of the items in these boxes. Thousands of artifacts and crates were then transported to the Loire Valley using hundreds of trucks.
How The Mona Lisa Survived The Second World War
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