It was an unusually art-filled Olympics Opening Ceremony in Paris as the Parade of Nations traveled by boat down the River Seine. The Mona Lisa escaped from the Louvre to catch the occasion, braving the rain along with an expected 300,000 Parisians and visitors from around the world.

Carrying the Olympic torch throughout the festivities was a mysterious masked figure first seen in a rowboat in the Parisian catacombs. His face obscured, he wore a costume that recalled famous French characters the Phantom of the Opera and Arsène Lupin.

He dashed over the Parisian rooftops—including the Musée d’Orsay—à la Assassin’s Creed Unity from French video game developer Ubisoft; ziplined over the Seine; and strode into the Louvre. He passed the Winged Nike of Samothrace at the Daru staircase, and then into the galleries with masterpieces like Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon. The canvases began coming to life, their figures suddenly exiting the frames.

As the broadcast cut back to the river, the boats began passing monumental cut outs of faces from historic paintings in the Louvre collection.

Team Ukraine, Uruguay, and Tuvalu cruise past the Palais du Louvre during Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Markus Gilliar – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images.

There were Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s The Portrait of Madeleine (1803); Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (1594); Relief of Seti I and Hathor; Portrait of Shah Abbas I and His Page (1627); and Georges de la Tour’s The Card Sharp with the Ace of Diamonds (ca. 1636).

Each face was submerged below their nose, and their eyes moved to track the boats of athletes as they journeyed down to the Trocadéro opposite the Eiffel Tower.

Reproductions of an artwork from the Louvre Museum installed in the Seine during the Olympic Games opening ceremoney in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Naomi Baker / POOL / AFP via Getty Images.

“Some of those great works of art that we saw missing from the Louvre, I think I spy them there in the Seine,” NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie said. “They’ve made their escape—they didn’t want to miss it either.”

Back in the Louvre, the torch bearer paused suddenly in front of an escape tunnel gouged in the floor of one of the galleries. Looking up, there was broken glass and an empty frame: someone stole (again) Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

A torchbearer runs atop the Musee d’Orsay during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on July 26, 2024 in Paris, France. Photo by Peter Cziborra – Pool/Getty Images.

A tribute to French cinematic history that included nods to Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon and the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train revealed the famed painting’s whereabouts. The Minions, the cute and cuddly criminals from the Despicable Me franchise (produced by France’s Illumination studios) were the culprits.

The Mona Lisa survived target practice as the Minions practiced various Olympic sports, only to wind up floating in the Seine in what was an admittedly strange bit.

She was in good company, however, with 10 new public statues of historic French women rising up out of the river for the occasion. In a segment titled “Sororité,” or sisterhood, the monuments, which are being gifted to the city following the games, were unveiled one by one.

“It’s pretty special,” NBC commentator Kelly Clarkson said. “There are 260 statues of men in Paris public space, and only about 40 statues of women. These are some of the heroines of French history—writers, advocates, politicians.”

It was especially fitting for the first Olympic games to have an equal number of qualifying spots available for male and female athletes. The statues depicted Olympe de Gouges, Alice Milliat, Gisèle Halimi, Simone de Beauvoir, Paulette Nardal, Jeanne Barret, Louise Michel, Christine de Pizan, Simone Veil, and pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché.

Above on the roof of the recently restored Grand Palais, which will host the rechristened Art Basel Paris in the fall, came a performance by French mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel. She was joined by a choir bearing flags that the New York Times reports were designed by African-American artist Faith Ringgold, who died in April. (The blink-and-you’ll-miss it shot was one of the evening’s few nods to contemporary visual art.)

The ceremony also paid tribute to the still-ongoing restoration of Notre-Dame. The historic cathedral suffered a devastating fire in 2019. President Emmanuel Macron initially vowed to rebuild the landmark in time for the Paris games. Instead, it will reopen in December.

But the painstaking work on the landmark was celebrated with a dance number on the scaffolding that currently surrounds the church. The sounds of the construction work became the music for the elaborately choreographed performance, which concluded with the ringing of the cathedral bells for the first time since the blaze.

“This segment, ‘Synchronicité,’ honors those who have worked together to rebuild the cathedral,” NBC host Mike Tirico said.

The Notre-Dame Cathedral during the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Zhang Yuwei – POOL/Getty Images.

While Notre-Dame is unable to take part in the games, other historic landmarks are becoming venues for the competition. The Palace of Versailles will host equestrian events, while beach volleyball will take place in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and fencing will be under the iron, steel and glass barrel-vaulted roof of the Grand Palais.

The Paris mint, which made the medals for the 1896 Athens Olympics that inaugurated the modern games, has incorporated Eiffel Tower scraps from renovations over the years into this year’s medals. (The masked torch bearer’s journey through the city included a trip through the forgery to see the medals being made.)

Celine Dion performs on the Eiffel Tower at the conclusion of the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain / POOL / AFP via Getty Images.

The 1889 tower also became a dramatic stage for the opening ceremony’s closing performance, with French Canadian songstress Celine Dion singing Edith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour” from high up on the wrought-iron structure.

It was an emotional moment for a singer who has not performed publicly since 2019, and is suffering from the rare stiff person syndrome.

Former French tennis player Amelie Mauresmo, former French basketball player Tony Parker, former French Paralympic athlete Marie-Amelie Le Fur, former French Paralympic athlete Nantenin Keita, and French Paralympic Triathlon athlete Alexis Hanquinquant pass the the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Louvre as they carry the Olympic Torch to the Cauldron during the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images.

But before Dion sang us out, the Olympic flag traveled down the river on horseback. It was carried by another masked figure, this one representing Sequana, the goddess of the Seine. She was clad in armor from French designer Jeanne Friot, known for her non-binary fashion line.

The silver mechanical horse sculpture, by Atelier blam in Nantes, is set to be donated to a museum by pharmaceutical company Sanofi after the games, according to HuffPost.

“The horse is equipped with a flotation system created specifically for the needs of the opening ceremony by naval architects from Quiberon. The mechanism transcribes as precisely as possible the movements of a horse’s gallop ,” Aurélien Meyer, the atelier’s founder and artistic director, told Ouest-France.

An armored horsewoman, wearing the flag of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is seen on a metal horse sculpture designed by Atelier blam. She is riding on the River Seine during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on July 26, 2024 in Paris, France. Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images.

Then, the last stretch of the torch relay returned to the courtyard of the Louvre, where French artist JR carried the flame earlier this month.

A series of 24 French Olympians carried the flame across to the Tuileries Garden, where final torch bearers Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec lit what Tirico called “the most unique Olympic cauldron we have ever seen.”

As a ring flames ignited, they gave flight to a 100-foot-tall hot air balloon created by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur. (He also masterminded this year’s streamlined, symmetrical torches.)

The Olympic Cauldron floating past the Louvre during the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris, France, 2024. Photo: Julian Finney/Getty Images.

“It’s a tribute to the first flight made in a hydrogen-filled gas balloon,” Tirico said. “It was done by two French inventors right there in the garden of the Tuileries in 1783.”

That’s where the dramatic flame will burn for the next 19 days, aloft over the Paris skyline, a new beacon in the city of light—let the games begin!