A water leak at the Louvre Museum damages hundreds of works of art and ancient documents.

BarcelonaA water leak at the Louvre Museum in Paris caused flooding on November 27 in the museum's Egyptian antiquities library, damaging hundreds of ancient works and documents, according to the EFE news agency. This news was originally published by the specialized magazine The Tribune of Art This Sunday, the incident was confirmed by the French channel BFM, which showed several images of the water damage and an internal museum email referencing the event. According to the email, a valve on the pipes located above a documentation area "caused a significant flood of dirty water that severely damaged works and documents and considerably deteriorated the workspaces." The account states that the carpet was soaked and the offices were unusable. Workers on duty that night managed to stop the leak without affecting the electrical panel on a lower floor. According to the person in charge of The Tribune of ArtDidier Rykner said the leak affected "around 400 works," some of which are "irrecoverable." In the publication, Rykner explains that the incident is linked to the department staff's long-standing request to protect the books from a potential rupture in the pipes, which "have been in a very precarious state for years." The Egyptian antiquities library is located in the Mollien Pavilion and is part of the museum's research and documentation service. It is a space accessible only to curators, historians, academics, and Louvre Museum staff. All of this occurred just weeks after the Louvre suffered a robbery by a group of thieves, who stole French crown jewels in broad daylight. That theft put the museum's security under scrutiny, and it was questioned by numerous experts. The Senate opened an administrative investigation following the robbery, and its findings will be presented next Wednesday. All members of the group of thieves were arrested, but the jewels have not been recovered.