Peruggia basically took it off the wall and walked out with it in broad daylight On the day that Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa, how did he evade the CCTV and the alarm systems to snatch the painting out of its bullet-proof glass display case? Simple. It was 1911 and none of that existed. As the photo below shows, the Mona Lisa (arrow) was just another painting hanging on the wall of the Salon Carré in the Louvre. It wasn’t behind any special barrier and wasn’t subject

Meet the greatest thief you've never heard of. This is Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter from a town in northern Italy who lived and worked in Paris. What makes this rather dapper individual unique is that on August 21, 1911, he walked into the Louvre and walked out with Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece — the Mona Lisa. What’s even more mind-boggling is that he kept the painting in his one-room flat in Paris’ 10th arrondissement for nearly 2-1/2 years before bringing