Mona Lisa he stresses that the images never existed. Kemp is also adamant that Cotte’s images in no way establish the existence of a separate underlying portrait. On 21 August 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre. The theft was not discovered until the next day, when painter Louis Béroud walked into the museum and went to the Salon Carré where the "Mona Lisa" had been on display for five years, only to find four iron pegs on the wall. Béroud contacted the head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for promotional purposes. A few hours later,
Paris in the Belle Époque pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, who made the first aircraft flight in Paris in 1906. The "Santos watch" went on sale in 1911 and was a huge success for the company. The industry of mass tourism and large luxury hotels had arrived in Paris under Napoleon III, driven by new railroads and the huge crowds that had come for the first international expositions. The expositions and the crowds grew even larger during the "Belle Époque"; twenty-three million visitors came to Paris for the 1889 exposition, and the 1900 exposition welcomed forty-eight million visitors. The Grand Hôtel du Louvre, built for the universal