The Dark History Of The World's Most Famous Museum

Paris, a city of legend and romance, and at its heart, a museum with secrets dark and strange. Tales of murders and conspiracy, a lady who vanishes, the cunning lies of an emperor, and the greatest survival story ever told. Secrets hidden in plain sight, inside The Room. Paris is an ancient city, witness to revolution, celebration, and war. At its center stands the Louvre, once a royal palace and now one of the world's greatest museums. The Louvre is home to the most famous painting in human history, the Mona Lisa. Her enigmatic smile is said to conceal many secrets. One of them is how she became so famous. For years, she was just one among many masterpieces at the Louvre. But then, on a summer day in 1911, the lady vanished. This was the greatest art theft ever committed. You know, it was unprecedented. It made worldwide headlines. Now, the Mona Lisa had been a famous painting, but it's not the Mona Lisa that we know today. It's not the icon that you see on coffee mugs and t-shirts and then being sold at souvenir stands. The Mona Lisa was not that well known. Today, 8 million visitors a year are drawn here by her fame and mystery. But in 1911, she caught the eye of one man who had his own, more secret motives. Vincenzo Perugia, he was one of the guys that was brought to the Louvre to put the masterpieces under glass. As he was walking around, he would notice all this great Italian artwork. And he kind of wondered, where did it come from? He heard some stories, he read some things, and he put two and two together and kind of got five out of it. He got into his head that he was going to return a masterpiece to Italy, where he thought it belonged. And the one that he chose was the Mona Lisa. If you've seen any of these great heist movies, it's carefully planned by a small gang. They plot everything out, they've got their escape route planned. Perugia, as far as I can tell, didn't do any of that. Perugia simply waited for a Monday when the Louvre was closed to the public. He then entered with all the other workers. He went to the Salon Carré. The guard was outside taking a cigarette break. Perugia took the Mona Lisa off the wall and carried it to a service staircase, where he took apart the frame he'd helped to build. He tried to get out a locked door by taking the doorknob off, but it didn't work. So he turned around, walked back through the Louvre, and left through the same door he'd come in. So Perugia comes out of the door, and nobody's seen him so far. And he's going to go up this way, up the quay. And he's moving rather fast, because it's Monday and he's got to get to work. Plus, he wants to get away from here as soon as possible. Then he remembers he's got something in his pocket. He's got the doorknob. He doesn't mind stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. He doesn't want to get accused of taking their doorknob. So he flings it over here. And as he's doing that, a guy across the street sees him. Joe Medeiros is a former head writer for the Jay Leno Show. The theft of the Mona Lisa fascinates him so much that he spent years working on a film about Perugia. So Perugia's apartment is about two miles away from the Louvre. So how does he get there? He takes the bus. I find it kind of amazing that nobody ever saw him riding the bus with the painting. I mean, look at the size of this thing. How do you sit on a bus very inconspicuously with something this big? I feel like a ventriloquist. How are you today? Oh, I'm fine. I'm just here riding the bus. When this robbery was detected, Louvre officials were humiliated and police were baffled. Fortunately, Paris was then home to the man known as the world's greatest detective, Alphonse Bertillon, a pioneer of forensic science, the world's first CSI investigator. Some of his methods would prove faulty. But other innovations, like the mugshot, are still in use today. Museum officials were confident that with Bertillon's help, police would catch the thief. They had two clues. Police had found the missing doorknob and interviewed the eyewitness who saw Perugia throw it away. Unfortunately, his description was completely wrong. Then detectives found a thumbprint on the glass of the abandoned frame. The museum had actually fingerprinted everyone who worked at the Louvre, including Perugia. But the filing system only allowed them to sort the prints by the right hand, and the thumbprint on the glass was from the left. Wild rumors began to circulate. Was the theft the work of an international crime ring? Was it a plot by the Germans? Investigators followed a lead to an unscrupulous Spaniard by the name of Pablo Picasso. It was revealed much later that Picasso had a couple of stolen statuettes from the Louvre hidden in his sock drawer. But not the Mona Lisa. Today, the Mona Lisa is protected by three layers of bulletproof glass. The mysterious Italian lady is the most carefully guarded artwork in the world. This is a museum from the 21st century. There is no doubt about that. And the second very important thing that has changed compared to the time of the flight of the Joconde in 1911 is first of all the number of security agents at the Louvre. In 1911 there were 13. Now there are 1,300. So it's still considerable. The dimensions of the Louvre are indeed particular, probably unique in the world. It's about 200,000 square meters, 60,000 square meters of exhibition space for the public, 2,500 employees, 900 cameras, 2,000 doors, 5,000 keys. These are absolutely extraordinary dimensions. So Perugia lived on Ruha Patel St. Louis. This whole area was filled with Italian immigrants from northern Italy. They were bricklayers, they were plasterers. Like Perugia, they were house painters. His apartment is right over there. So, you know, over the course of two years, in this incredible manhunt, Perugia basically sat on it in his apartment. He takes the painting and he puts it in the closet. Two years after the theft of the Mona Lisa, there's a break in the case. In Florence, Italy, an art dealer receives a letter mysteriously signed Leonardo from a man who wants to return the Mona Lisa to Italy. The art dealer arranges to meet Leonardo at his apartment. The man is actually Perugia. Perugia drags out the trunk, opens the trunk, and they're watching him take out, you know, his painting tools, old pants, shoes, you know, his workman's smock, his mandolin. And they're looking at each other going, what have we gotten ourselves into? This guy has got nothing here. So, until he takes out the false bottom, unwraps the Mona Lisa, he gives him what looks like a genuine Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. So, Vincenzo Perugia is sitting in his hotel room waiting to be compensated for bringing the Mona Lisa to Italy because he thinks he has done a good and noble patriotic act. There's a knock on his door. He opens it, and who's there but the Carabinieri. They arrest him. They take him to jail. They fingerprint him. They photograph him. He's going, what's going on? I'm a hero here. Shortly after his arrest, a psychiatrist examines Perugia and deems him mentally deficient. He is soon released, a free man. Perugia faded into obscurity, but because of his notorious crime, the Mona Lisa's fame grew. Before returning to France, she made a triumphant tour of Italy, cementing the celebrity she enjoys to this day. Perugia's failed attempt to repatriate an Italian painting transformed the Mona Lisa from an ordinary woman into an international superstar. The Louvre is filled with monumental artworks depicting epic moments of history, but not all are what they seem. This canvas records the coronation of Napoleon. It is a painting full of lies. Jacques-Louis David was the official painter of the new empire of Napoleon, so this painting has also a role of political propaganda. And we are not on time of Facebook or YouTube, so you could cheat easily on history, and that's what he did. From the beginning of his rise to power, Napoleon was a master of controlling his public image. In December of 1804, when he set out towards Notre-Dame Cathedral to become emperor, he was determined to create the greatest piece of political theater ever seen. Napoleon and his wife, Josephine, left the royal palace at 10 o'clock in the morning and took about two hours to go to Notre-Dame. And the procession passed just here, on this place, the Conseil d'Etat, we say. France is no longer ruled by an emperor, but if it were, the heir to the throne would now be Charles Napoleon, the descendant of Napoleon's youngest brother. In the carriage, Napoleon was with his two brothers, and Napoleon told Joseph, what would our father think if he would see us today? The Bonaparte family came from a very small city, and in fact, today, he's going to be crowned as an emperor of the western part of Europe. Crazy history, you know, and he realized how crazy it was. It was only 12 years since the French had declared the end of the monarchy and chopped off the head of their king. Napoleon realized the people were going to need to be convinced before they'd accept him as emperor. That's why the artist David was commissioned to attend the ceremony at Notre-Dame Cathedral, pencil in hand, to record it and alter it to Napoleon's satisfaction. First, a few minor touch-ups. Napoleon is shown taller than he really was. The pope, in David's original drawings, was shown with his hands folded in his lap. But when Napoleon saw it, he said, I didn't bring the pope all the way from Rome to have him sit there and do nothing. So the hands were repainted to show him giving a sign of blessing. An interesting detail is also a thing that you can't see, because the school of the neoclassical academical painting is that you have to first copy a model to make it all naked. And once you have the person all naked, then you add the clothes. We have from the pope sketches where he's sitting all naked in the chair. So it is something quite unusual to see the pope all naked. David made significant changes. Here, Napoleon's mother, Madame Laetitia, gazes benevolently on the royal couple sitting below. But in fact, she wasn't there at all. She refused to come. Laetitia wasn't there because she didn't approve the marriage with Josephine. She was, you know, a very jealous mother. She was a kind of very Mediterranean mother. So she didn't approve this marriage. And even the sisters of Napoleon were in a kind of competition with Josephine. And before the coronation, about carrying the very long coat of Josephine, Napoleon decided that they had to do it anyway. And it was done. The image of Empress Josephine was altered, too. She was just over 40, but is portrayed as a radiantly beautiful young woman. There is no hint in the painting of her anger at recently catching Napoleon in another woman's bedroom or at his threats of divorce. As they had not been married in the Catholic Church, divorce was possible. But Josephine knew a thing or two of her own about manipulation. She decided in the night before the coronation to take appointment with a pope. The pope just didn't know that she wasn't married at the church with Napoleon. The pope refused to participate in the coronation unless they were married in the Catholic Church. Napoleon had no choice but to accept a rushed marriage the night before the coronation. The finished painting depicts the moment when Napoleon steps forward to crown his wife as empress. But the original version showed the first part of the ceremony, where he defiantly placed the crown on his own head. He put the crown out of the hand of the pope to crown himself. This is a very famous episode of the consecration of Napoleon. And if you look just behind the head of Napoleon, you can see the first version shimmering through the painting. Why was this change made? Some say the artist preferred it this way. But Napoleon's memoirs reveal that the painter was convinced to make the change by Josephine. The new empress was aging and unable to produce an heir. And in a few short years, Napoleon would manage to divorce her. But in this painting, she is young. She is beautiful. And she is fixed forever in a moment of triumph. Not his, but hers. In one hand, you know, you have the very official ceremony by coronation and painting of David. When you look behind, you can see all the jealousy between the different people there. The everyday comedy, you know, of their life. On the second floor of the Louvre stands a masterpiece of metalwork. It is known as the armor of the 16th century French king, Henri II. And if you think it looks brand new, there's a good explanation for that. Henri never wore it. The reason why is a museum secret. Henri owned many suits of armor that he wore not only in battle, but for protection during one of his favorite pursuits, jousting. As he prepared to face an opponent on the 30th of June, 1559, no one expected that a freak accident would change history. One of the splinters from the lance would have entered the orbit or eye socket like this. They didn't penetrate the bone of the skull. What they did was, because they were so filthy, a jousting lance would be full of horse feces and various other stuff from the ground. It introduced a lot of foreign, very dirty material into the soft tissues of the orbit, producing an infection in the eye socket. Henri II had just turned 40 and still took pride in his athleticism. He wasn't considered especially bright, but he was tall and handsome and looked good in a suit of armor. Our brave Henri II was a jouster. He loved it, just like all the great knights of the time, so he organized tournaments. A knight is trained to be a soldier of the elite. There weren't that many wars in the Middle Ages. It could go on for 10 or 20 years without a battle. What did the knights do? To be the strongest in a battlefield is to win the battle, but to be the strongest in a civil life, in peacetime, is to joust. Two horses, each weighing 1,000 pounds, rush towards each other at 20 miles per hour. Each rider is wearing 80 pounds of armor and carries a 14-foot lance. It's not a sport for the timid. Historically, helmets are a visor that is completely empty. We often add small grids so that no shots can enter. It's not historical, but we have small adjustments that allow us to get closer without any problems. Their lance was made of wood with a three-piece hook to distribute the impact and hang the armor to push the opponent. We have relatively light wood that breaks easily, but Henri II's injury could happen to a contemporary rider. With splinters of a shattered lance driven deep into his eye socket, the king was rushed back to his palace. There, in agony, he was attended by two doctors who are considered pioneers of modern medicine. Ambroise Paré, the father of surgery, and Andreas Vesalius, whose works on anatomy became essential tools of medicine for hundreds of years. These were men of science. These were observers. They saw Henri II's injury and tried to put together the facts and figure out what happened. Well, the shard went into the eye, but probably didn't penetrate the orbit, so it probably went in a couple of centimeters. Can we lay in a shard? That's what I'm going to put now. Using new visualization software to display the king's wound as described by his physicians, brain surgeon Dr. Mark Bernstein and researcher Fabio Ayres pieced together the precise nature of the wound. And then that's the target. Can we make an entry point and drop the pencil into the straight line? There, that's better. That's sort of where it ended. When the splinters went in, and one of them is represented here by this green line, they probably immediately blinded his eye. And you can see here as I peel back the scalp, one of the splinters had already received the trauma to his right eye. There was an acceleration this way and then an acceleration backwards, and the brain would have swirled forward. This is a common mechanism of brain injury. It likely produced a bruise at the backside of the brain here. Ultimately, as the eyeball became more and more infected, the bacteria spread back into the brain and set up shop, so that would have produced a wound around the brain. And any pressure that goes uncontrolled inside the skull leads to death. The king's doctors tried to understand his wound by experimenting on the heads of decapitated criminals. Growing desperate, they considered cutting open the king's skull to relieve the pressure, a procedure called trepanation. Given the level of knowledge at that time, they were extremely lucky and put it over the pus. There would have been no way of localizing it. Nowadays, we have CAT scans, we have MRIs, we can find out where things are exactly in the brain. They had no such access to imaging. But if they'd done a trepanation and they put it right on top of the pus, he might have done better. After 11 days of torment, Henri II succumbed to his injury. It's said that Henri died as this suit of armor was nearing completion. And that's why he never wore it. He never got the chance. Henri's untimely death plunged France into a period of bloody internal conflict. His death also spelled the end of his favorite extreme sport. Jousting was replaced by a safer game of skill, where riders aim glances at wooden rings. Over time, such games became horses made of wood. The carousel was born. So every time you see a child on a merry-go-round, remember that their innocent joy began with the death of a king. At the Louvre, every work of art tells a story. Some are stories of hope, some of despair. One canvas tells the true story of a naval tragedy. These are the survivors of an unspeakable ordeal. 147 people set adrift on a hostile sea. When rescue finally came, there were just 15 survivors. What happened? The captain was a man who hadn't been to sea for 25 years. And this man was in command over a crew who had served Napoleon, who had fought against the British, and had been continually to sea in the previous two decades. This created a kind of charged atmosphere from the moment that the expedition set sail. The French ship Medusa set sail in 1816 to reclaim the colony of Senegal. But off the coast of Africa, the captain's incompetence led to his vessel coming too close to shifting sandbags, where it ran aground. The commander promised with a small, bold flag that everybody would be saved. They made this pledge and then promptly seated themselves in the nice longboat, the skiff, and the other people, the rabble, as it were, they were consigned to the raft. The raft the crew constructed was large, almost the size of a tennis court. But under the weight the plan was that the boats would form a kind of convoy linked together by ropes and they would row the raft to shore. But in the kind of disorganization of evacuation, one of the officers got a hatchet and he started to hack at the rope that was pulling the Medusa. The raft of the Medusa was abandoned by an artist looking for a way to make his mark. When news of the abandoned raft reached France, he chose this scandalous subject for his first major work. It would lead him to the edge of madness. Jericho had a fascination for dark subjects. Wounded soldiers, dead animals, violence and madness. And he had a dark story of his own. An incestuous affair with his uncle's young wife had led him to fill his notebooks with erotic drawings. She had recently become pregnant with his child. A scandal was about to break. He closeted himself in his studio, shaved his head as if to remove himself from the world and began to draw the first sketches of a story of horror and despair. The raft of the Medusa had been set adrift 60 miles out to sea in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. At the edge of the Sahara, the sun sears exposed flesh. And for anyone who should fall into the sea, sharks are ever circling. The castaways had nothing but two barrels of wine and one cask of hard biscuits to keep them alive. On the first night, there was fairly rough weather. When they woke up in the morning, they found people squealing on the masts of the raft. People were already beginning to die. On the second night, they endured a violent storm. Their growing rage of commanders who had abandoned them was turned against each other. There was a riot. Many people were killed. After the second night, when they woke up, they found 60 people dead. It occurred to some people that this was a potential death punishment. It was a fairly gruesome task to have to eat it raw, scooped off the body of a dead comrade. So they would take little slices of human flesh and hang them up on the cordage to sort of wind dry and make it easier to eat. As he tried to paint this depravity and suffering, Jericho withdrew from society almost completely, near his studio. There was an insane asylum where he had fainted some of the inmates. Now he returned on a darker errand. He convinced the doctors to give him body parts from the morgue. He displayed these in his studio, trying to recreate the experience of the lost souls on the raft. The horrific elements begin to disappear until he reaches a final, surprising choice. After his long study of despair, he chooses to paint a moment of hope, the moment when, after 13 days, the survivors spot a sail on the horizon. There was tremendous excitement, obviously, on board. But when he got to the boat, it didn't see them. It disappeared. It's a moment that's all about hope, but it's false hope. It's hope with a spike in it because, of course, the ship disappears. And then, two hours later, miraculously, the frigate reappeared. And what's more, this time it seems to have sighted them at its first public exhibition. The raft of the Medusa shocked France and the world. The human cost of the captain's incompetence had been exposed, and the public outcry would bring down the government. But Jericho didn't live long enough to see his painting sold. He was never reunited with the woman he loved. His only child was raised as an orphan. Another head of state assassinated at the height of his fame. A lone assassin and the lingering question, did he act alone? Not John F. Kennedy in 1963, but Henri IV of France 400 years ago. So the painting is called The Apotheosis of Henri IV. And, well, there are two parts of the painting. The part on the left is The Apotheosis, and we can see Henri IV. He's the white-bearded man. At the feet of Henri IV, you have a snake with an arrow piercing the neck. The snake represents Ravaillac, who is the man who murdered Henri IV. 400 years to the day since the assassination of Henri IV, historian Jean-François Berge retraces his final fateful journey. Even today, Henri IV is remembered in France with great affection. Perhaps because of his reputation as le bon roi, the good king. The monarch who truly cared about the poorest of his subjects and promised a chicken in every pot. It's not only in history, but it's a legend as well. Going into the house of a peasant and drinking with him without being recognized, but loved by the people and a lot of things. And he liked life, of course. He had quite a few mistresses. It is said that Henri IV had more mistresses than all the other kings of France combined. Many of them had born him children, but he needed a wife to have a legal heir. In his oeuvre, 24 paintings by the great artist Peter Paul Rubens depict her story. It was an arranged marriage. Henri had only seen her portrait. He didn't even attend the wedding. It was conducted by proxy. The new queen was sent to France to celebrate her wedding night with a man she had never met. A man whose other women were all around her. Soon, factions started to form. The Protestants around the king thought he was crowned. The Catholics took one step closer to power. The very next day, when the king left the Louvre, a Catholic mystic on a mission from God would be waiting outside. The road is blocked and the carriage is forced to stop. The guards leave the carriage to clear the way for another carriage. He leaps up onto the carriage wheel and through the window plunges his knife into the king's heart. The assassination looks like the work of a lone assailant, but there are signs that Paul is not as it seems. In the king's carriage is the Duke of Épernon, an aristocrat who the king has never trusted. After the assassination, he seizes Ravaillac and prevents the angry crowd from killing him on the spot. The duke rushes back to the palace to see if he can find and within hours instructs the queen to claim the regency. His moves seem very swift and very well prepared. Mary of Medici is a widow. That's the reason why she's wearing black. The moment her husband was dead, she sent a representative to the parliament of Paris asking for the regency of France, which is not what you see here. What you see here are the people at court giving the power of France to Mary. Mary of Medici, who commissioned the paintings, wanted her story to be told in one way, and so she twists the history so that she can be seen in a better light. Ravaillac was put on trial. The court didn't believe his story that he had done it alone. They were convinced he'd been working for somebody and in the end, they found him obviously guilty and sentenced him to death. But before his execution, they decided that he was to be put to the question, to be tortured. They used what is a particularly French torture known as the brodican, and the brodican consists of a couple of planks that are strapped on the outside of the legs, holding them very tightly together and obviously break the bones. By using the legs of a pig, we can get some idea of the effect this device would have had on a human. Excruciatingly painful by all accounts, but the redeeming factor of this particular torture is that it could be extended almost indefinitely. At no point during Ravaillac's interrogation or torture did he ever indicate that anyone was in any way even remotely involved in assisting him in this act. But a year later, a source would come forward with an astonishing accusation. When Ravaillac arrived in Paris, he had received free room and board at the home of the mistress of none other than the Duke of Hépernon. Ravaillac had never spoken a word of this. Was it the truth? We don't know. For execution, the actual death sentence, he was to be drawn and quartered, be torn apart by horses. They misled me. Who did he mean by they? We will never know because moments after he said it, he was torn to pieces. Like the assassin of President Kennedy, Ravaillac was sent to his grave along with his secrets. And ever since, the people of France have wondered what Marie de' Medici knew and when she knew it. In 1984, the Louvre embarked on a project to create a new entrance for the museum, the familiar glass pyramid that stands in the courtyards today. But before builders could begin construction, they needed to find out what lay below. They uncovered an ancient rampart and the personal devices of the stonecutters who built it. The presence of this man eight centuries ago cutting very slowly the stones for the building. The Louvre as we know it today was built as a royal palace constructed at the site of an earlier structure, a medieval fortress. Yes, here we are in the central moat of the castle. In the middle of the moat, there was a great tower, the dungeon of the Louvre. The dungeon was conceived as part of the fortress to be taken if there was an attack. Along the old castle walls, excavators discovered an ancient well, long disused and filled with rubbish. Scattered throughout, they found the fragments of a golden helmet. When it was found, the helmet was not like this, but it was whole torn and smashed in little pieces, 25 pieces. They were dark, covered with dust and earth, not very good looking. What is interesting here is that the helmet was voluntarily destroyed before it was put in the well. And so we wonder, of course, of how such a marvelous object was destroyed. Markings on the helmet may be the first clue. The fleur-de-lis, emblem of French royalty, the inscription en bien, for the good, is the mother of Charles VI, a 14th century monarch better known as Charles the Mad. In fact, he was not mad all the time. He had crisis. And the first important crisis occurred during a war campaign. He was with his army and he had to cross through a forest near the city of Le Mans. And before entering the forest, he met a beggar who told him, don't go further because you are betrayed. In the forest behind the king, a soldier let his spear fall with a crash. Hearing the sound, King Charles thought his men were about to attack him. The king drew his sword and started to slash at his own soldiers in a frenzy. They had no way to defend themselves against their king. Over the years, his madness grew. He began to forget his own identity and eventually came to believe that he was made of glass and that if anybody touched him, he would shatter. We know that during his crisis of madness, he destroyed objects around him and especially objects which were linked with his personality. So objects with lilies, objects with his arms, objects with his name may be that he, the helmet was destroyed by the king himself in one of his crisis of madness. So this is a wonderful work of art, but this is also a testimony of a troubled period of our history. Every painting, every sculpture, every work of art in the Louvre has a secret to tell. That's what draws people here. For every mystery we reveal, far more remain unspoken. Because this museum is the heart of the history of a nation. From ancient walls of stone to the pyramid of glass that now stands out front, every generation for a thousand years has left a mark. Their stories still linger within its walls.