Why Was It So Easy to Steal the Mona Lisa?

Perugia 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 to any special protection.

So where were the guards and the crowds? Nonexistent because Peruggia took the Mona Lisa on a Monday, the day the Louvre was routinely closed for its weekly cleaning and maintenance. So no visitors. And the guards? On a normal day, the Louvre had 166 guards patrolling the galleries. On a typical Monday, just 12.

So how did he get into the museum and out with the painting? Our next post will talk about that.