Tourists were turned away from the Louvre on Friday as striking staff blocked the entrance to the world's most-visited museum, in the latest protest against plans to overhaul France's pension system.
Da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" was sold for $450.3 million in 2017 to the Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre, but has not gone on display since then. The exhibition in Paris features a version of the same painting made by one of da Vinci's disciples.
The Mona Lisa has been behind safety glass since the early 1950s, when it was damaged by a visitor who poured acid on it. Since then there have been several other unsuccessful attempts at vandalising the painting.
Five hundred years after his death, Leonardo da Vinci’s interaction with the Ottomans is memorialised in his designs for a bridge and his overtures to the Ottoman Sultans of the time.
More than 650 people have been evacuated from their homes in the region, according to police, while more than 1,400 were without electricity.
In addition to Paris, where the Seine river is expected to keep rising, the other regions threatened are in the north and east of the country.
French officials have identified the suspect as Abdullah Reda Refaei al-Hamamy, who was born in Dakahlia, a province of northeast of Cairo.
The United Arab Emirates branch of the famed Louvre Museum has been pushed back to next year due to a delay in construction.
Curators at the Louvre scramble to evacuate valuable artworks and ancient artifacts amid the threat of rising flood levels.
The damage from flooding in France is already estimated to cost around $680 million according to France's association of insurers.
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