$1.2 Million in Art From the Louvre

Possibly the most famous museum in the world is the Louvre in France. After all, the Mona Lisa is shown there. It is one of the top attractions in Paris, right next to the Eiffel Tower. And the value of all the art included therein would be $45.5 billion.

The museum's administrators should be very careful about where their art goes and how it is handled, and they probably are, but occasionally mistakes are made, usually unintentionally. Who at the Louvre could possibly have known that the artwork they loaned to the Maritime Museum on the island of Tatihou would catch fire?

It's not unusual for museums to loan items to other institutions so that new art admirers might appreciate them because museums are all about appreciating art. Along with roughly 200 of the Maritime Museum's own pieces, three of these paintings—one by Alexandre Casati and two by unidentified Dutch painters—were destroyed when the building caught fire after being struck by lightning.