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winterhalters:

history meme (french edition)  →  8 moments (1/8) The evacuations of the Louvre Museum

The two evacuations of the Louvre Museum, in 1914 and later in 1939, took place both times under perilous circumstances, and remained a great traumatism for its head and staff. While Paris was either under the bombings, or under the pressure of the Nazis, a group of people emptied the Louvre from its most precious treasures, risking their lives to protect what they believed in: art. The story goes that in 1914, when the first evacuation took place, the conservator himself pulled the Mona Lisa out of its frame – it had returned back only in the previous January after having been stolen for several years -, put it with extreme care in its wooden box, and slept over it in the train on the way to Toulouse. The first evacuation was extremely difficult and quite spectacular; no plan had ever been made for such circumstances, not even during the Commune in 1871. The second evacuation benefited however from a first protocol established in the 30s; the head of the National Museums endured valiantly the pressure displayed by the Nazis during most of WWII, and always refused to transfer back the works that were sheltered in the South. As of today, the Louvre Museum updates its evacuation protocol about every two years, with a list of about fifteen persons ready day and night to be called in case of emergency; bombing, fire, war, even nuclear attack are being anticipated to protect some of the most precious treasures in the world. Rumor has it that the Louvre’s current protocol is established to transfer its works in less than 5 hours.