The world-renowned Musée du Louvre, in Paris, France, started as a fortress when construction began in 1190. In the fourteenth century, Charles V converted the fortress into a residential chateau, and from the 1660s until 1682, Louis XIV, the Sun King, transformed the Louvre into the grandest palace in Europe. Within its walls today, 35,000 irreplaceable pieces of art are exhibited, including the three most notable—the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory at Samothrace.
The Mona Lisa, or as she is called in French, La Joconde, greets visitors from behind a climate-controlled enclosure fronted by bulletproof glass. Over five hundred years old, the portrait of the most famous woman in the world—Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant—measures only twenty-one inches wide by thirty inches tall. It is said that her eyes follow—perhaps even haunt—viewers. Her folded hands look smooth, and her smile, forever enigmatic. From the moment the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci finished this masterpiece in 1519 a few years before his death, no portrait has elicited more scrutiny, study, and even parody in the history of art.
During World War II, the Nazis looted thousands of paintings and art works from the lands they conquered. Armed with the knowledge that their beloved treasures were in danger, the French packed up the Mona Lisa before the German Army overran Paris. She was moved from one hiding place to another, and she even hung in a little girl’s bedroom for a time. The Mona Lisa remained safe throughout the time of the Nazi occupation of France . . .
Until the Libération of Paris.