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, 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.

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; 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.

“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 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.

The final torchbearer passes through the world’s largest museum! The Louvre Museum holds treasures from all cultures and connects France to world. #OpeningCeremony #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/rZXvpOHKSq

— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024

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.”

The final torchbearer discovers that the Mona Lisa has disappeared!?#Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/l6yAYOXNvY

— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024

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.)

💛 A tribute to 10 golden heroines of French history.

Olympe de Gouges, Alice Milliat, Gisèle Halimi, Simone de Beauvoir, Paulette Nardal, Jeanne Barret, Louise Michel, Christine de Pizan, Alice Guy and Simone Veil.#Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/VeUCrrDJ5q

— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024

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.

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.

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 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.

But before Dion sang us out, 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.)

“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!