Paris Flooding Threatens Louvre's Priceless Art; Most Art Deported to Safety Since Nazi Invasion

In the midst of a historic flood in Paris, a host of French cultural institutions -- including the Louvre and Orsay museums -- closed down today (June 3, 2016) and began evacuating artwork from galleries susceptible to flooding, the Washington Post website reports.

After several days of historic rainfall, the storied Seine -- the river that winds through the French capital -- swelled today to its highest level since 1982. Many of Paris's most important buildings line the river.

Curators at the Louvre -- the largest art museum in the world and the most visited in Europe -- began working rapidly to relocate some 250,000 artworks from flood-risk areas, mainly basement storerooms.

Exempting museum renovations, the last time as many works of art were transported as quickly and as frantically may have been the years leading up to the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, when the museum leadership sent the collection's masterpieces to a slew of safe locations across France, in order to prevent their theft by German troops.