began, one piece leaving nothing but the outline of where it once hung. we had 12 people working from early morning to late night. it was a very hard ten days. reporter: highly skilled museum staff moving the treasures to safety. there are different secure places, shelters around our city. unlike switzerland we don t have art shelters so we had to hide them various places. it is a very hard task to manage climate in these shelters but they re under the constant control of our preservation specialist. to give you an idea how enormous this undertaking is this is a picture of an icon wall from the 1800s about 40 feet high and displayed in this room in about three different sections. it had to be meticulously disassembled and then removed gingerly through small doors like this. keep in mind this is only one of about 1500 pieces of art work that had to be removed to safe spaces. the museum director says it is