One day in 1911, an Italian house painter named Vincenzo Peruggia, angered by INCESSANT French insults (he was often called a "macaroni eater") sought his revenge by stealing Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (on a Sunday, when the Louvre was relatively unguarded) and hiding out in a hotel for more than a year.

Peruggia was let off with a light sentence on 'patriotic' grounds by an Italian court. The hotel was renamed the Giaconda.

And the damage to the Louvre's business? Incredibly, more people visited the museum during this interval - to see the blank space on the wall where the Mona Lisa had once hung - than had visited over the previous twelve years to see the painting itself.

Norway's Edvard Munch museum enjoyed a similar increase (of more than 1000 people per week) following the theft of The Scream paintings in 2004.