📌 In This Deep Dive
While the film Masterplan depicts a heist through secret subterranean passages, geological realities confirm that no quarry or sewer tunnels cross beneath the Seine to reach the Louvre. Instead, the museum’s actual 1911 Mona Lisa theft relied on basic security oversight rather than high-tech engineering. This analysis explores the real underground map of Paris to separate cinematic fiction from historical fact, detailing how Vincenzo Peruggia pulled off history’s most famous art heist using nothing more than a worker’s smock.
A new heist movie centered on a high-stakes job in one of the most heavily guarded locations on Earth is out, and naturally, curiosity kicks in right away. Masterplan pulls off what is probably the ultimate dream of any master thief: stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum. It is an enterprise no one today would believe possible, sparking immediate questions about how realistic the plan orchestrated by Stanley Tucci’s character actually is.
In particular, the idea of accessing the Louvre’s subterranean vaults through the old underground tunnels of Paris is fascinating. There is indeed a vast network of hidden tunnels beneath the French capital, so it is only natural to ask whether finding “the right tunnel” to secretly enter the Louvre is complete fantasy or grounded in real engineering. On top of that, there is Vincenzo Peruggia: the man who actually stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. These two clues are far too intriguing not to explore.
It is time to break down the potential “true story” behind the heist in Masterplan: is it really possible to infiltrate the Louvre through underground tunnels, and how did Peruggia actually pull off the theft of the century over a hundred years ago?
Is there really a tunnel under the Louvre? The truth about underground Paris
The idea of slipping into the world’s most famous museum through a forgotten medieval passage or sewer grate sounds brilliant on screen. In Masterplan, the crew uses a secret subterranean passage connecting the Académie Française on the Left Bank to the basement of the Louvre on the Right Bank. But while subterranean Paris is very real, this specific route hits a massive geographical and engineering brick wall: the River Seine.
To connect those two landmarks underground, you would have to cut directly through the bed of the river. Sub-fluvial tunnels do exist in Paris, but they are heavy civil engineering projects like Metro Line 4 or deep wastewater siphons, built using submerged iron caissons and reinforced steel. There are simply no historic, walkable secret tunnels running beneath the riverbed that link opposite banks of the city.
The urban underground that fuels so many heist legends is actually split into very distinct, isolated networks. When people think of secret Parisian tunnels, they are usually imagining the ancient limestone quarries known today as the Catacombs. These galleries were originally dug out by the ancient Romans and expanded throughout the Middle Ages to extract building stone from beneath the city. Starting in the late eighteenth century, those same abandoned quarries were repurposed to deal with Paris’s overflowing cemeteries, as millions of human remains were moved underground, turning sections of the mines into the famous Catacombs.
These tunnels can indeed be navigated on foot, and history shows they were genuinely used to move and hide in total secrecy. In the late eighteenth century, smugglers routinely used the dark quarry paths to sneak untaxed wine and goods into Paris, bypassing the royal tax gates on the surface by crawling through subterranean passages. During World War II, both the French Resistance and occupying German forces set up hidden subterranean strongholds within the network to direct strategic operations out of sight.
However, those quarry tunnels exist strictly on the Left Bank of the Seine, whereas the Louvre sits on the Right Bank. The ground on the Louvre’s side of the river consists of soft, muddy alluvial soil where building stone was never extracted, meaning no ancient mining galleries or catacombs cross beneath the Seine to reach the opposite bank.
Then there is the Paris sewer network, which was completely rebuilt during Baron Haussmann’s massive transformation of the city in the mid-nineteenth century. Engineer Eugène Belgrand designed vaulted stone galleries wide enough for municipal workers to walk through upright. It was through these very tunnels that Jean Valjean escaped in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, cementing them in pop culture as the ultimate path for clandestine movement and escape.
Yes, it is entirely possible to walk along the raised stone ledges of the sewers, but climbing up into a building from there is another story altogether. Those tunnels were designed to drain wastewater away from the surface, not to provide a subterranean entry point into a secure facility. On top of that, sewer galleries often collect toxic gases that can render a person unconscious in seconds, and sudden rainstorms can flood the passages with little warning. And most importantly, none of these walkable channels cross beneath the Seine.
To complete the picture, the Louvre does have a sprawling subterranean world of its own, but it stays strictly within its own perimeter. Visitors can still walk through the excavated medieval moat and stone foundations of King Philippe Auguste’s original twelfth-century fortress, located deep beneath the Cour Carrée. However, there is no way for external tunnels to breach the space beneath the museum. When the Grand Louvre project was carried out in the 1980s, creating the iconic glass Pyramid, the foundations were thoroughly excavated once again and completely sealed. Had there been any rogue tunnels penetrating the ground under the Louvre, they would have been uncovered and sealed off decades ago.
In other words: the idea of finding “the right tunnel” to slip inside the walls of the Louvre is a thrilling premise for a movie or a novel, but in reality, it contradicts everything we know about the subterranean map of Paris and the physical structure of the museum.
The true story of the Mona Lisa theft in 1911
The Mona Lisa really was stolen from the Louvre. But the mechanics of the heist are a far cry from the Hollywood sci-fi we often see in genre films, taking place in an era with very few technological tools. It was carried out by an Italian decorator, Vincenzo Peruggia, who used his knowledge of the museum’s layout and its security routines to his advantage.
Peruggia had actually been hired by the Louvre some time earlier to install protective glass on several paintings, including the Mona Lisa. So he knew exactly how to remove those casings, and he had also developed a deep understanding of the security staff’s daily habits. At a certain point, driven by nationalist views that saw Italy as the natural home for Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, he decided to use everything he knew to steal the painting. And he pulled it off, with a simplicity that borders on absurd.
Peruggia took advantage of a day when the Louvre was closed for maintenance, Monday, August 21, 1911. He put on a smock identical to the ones worn by other maintenance staff and walked into the Louvre unnoticed. He waited until he was alone in the room with the Mona Lisa, then removed the protective glass (which he had installed himself some time before), took the painting out of its frame, and simply walked away with it. One of the maintenance workers even opened the door for him on his way out, and nobody realized he had one of the most famous paintings in the world on him.
The Mona Lisa’s absence was only discovered the next day. The investigation that followed tried to cover every possibility, and Vincenzo Peruggia was questioned multiple times, with police even inspecting his apartment. Nothing was found, though; nobody questioned the answers Peruggia gave, his fingerprints were never followed up on, and so the painting wasn’t found.
Peruggia’s goal was to bring the Mona Lisa back to Italy. In 1913, he went to Florence and contacted a local art curator, explaining that he had the Mona Lisa in his possession and wanted to return it to its rightful homeland. The director of the Uffizi was brought in, authenticated the painting, and then informed the police. Peruggia was arrested and the painting was returned to its rightful owner, the Louvre.
Vincenzo Peruggia’s theft was disarmingly simple and exposed the glaring flaws in the museum’s security system at the time. It did not rely on some complex plan no one had ever imagined, but rather on a basic understanding of daily museum operations and the carelessness of those tasked with protecting the artwork.
Today, pulling off a heist at the Louvre is a completely different level of complexity. Yet it remains a dream target for high-profile thieves around the world, and someone even managed to pull it off in 2025, a year before the release of Masterplan, when a group of eight thieves disguised as construction workers stole several French crown jewels in broad daylight.
It is a fantasy deeply rooted in both the real world and cinema, one that will endure for a long time to come and keep inspiring movies and series in the future. Stealing the Mona Lisa is something that will almost certainly never happen again in history, but filmmakers and master criminals alike will never stop dreaming up spectacular ways to breach the defenses of the most visited museum in the world.
Frequently Asked Questions
While inspired by real-world fascination with art heists and the Louvre, the specific plot (including the use of secret underground tunnels to breach the museum) is entirely fictional.
No. The Catacombs and limestone quarry galleries are located strictly on the Left Bank of the Seine. The Louvre sits on the Right Bank, where the soil is soft and muddy. No ancient mining tunnels or catacombs cross beneath the river to reach the museum.
No. Although parts of the Paris sewer network feature dry walking ledges, the channels do not cross beneath the Seine via walkable paths. Additionally, the network does not offer walkable doorways into secure building foundations and carries lethal environmental hazards like toxic gas and flash flooding.
Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had previously installed protective glass at the museum, walked into the Louvre on a closed maintenance day wearing a white worker’s smock. He unhooked the painting, removed its frame in a service stairwell, tucked the wooden panel under his arm, and walked out unnoticed.
Peruggia was driven by misplaced nationalism, mistakenly believing Napoleon had looted the painting from Italy during his military campaigns. In reality, Leonardo da Vinci brought the Mona Lisa to France himself in 1516 as a gift for King Francis I.
