Winged Victory of Samothrace is back at the Louvre

Less than a year after it was removed for restoration, the Winged Victory of Samothrace is back on its pedestal in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Since September, a team of French and foreign experts supervised restoration work on the statue of the Greek goddess Nike with the aim of highlighting the original contrast between the pale marble statue and the darker blue-gray of its ship's prow support.

The 4-million-euro project was completed with the help of sponsorships and private donations, organizers said. It came three years after another Louvre masterpiece, the Venus de Milo, was touched up.

Created around 190BC by an unknown sculptor, the iconic statue was discovered in 1863 by a French diplomat, Charles Champoiseau, on the Greek island of Samothrace in the Aegean Sea.

The 5.9-meter (about 18-foot) sculpture has graced the halls of the French museum since 1884.