Winged Victory of Samothrace
statue from Samothrace, Greece in the Louvre, Paris, France
The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or the Nike of Samothrace (el: Νίκη της Σαμοθράκης), is a votive monument originally discovered on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic era, dating from the beginning of the 2nd century BC (190 BC). It is composed of a statue representing the goddess Nike (Victory), whose head and arms are missing, and a base in the shape of a ship's bow.
The total height of the monument is 5.57 metres (18 ft 3 in) including the socle; the statue alone measures 2.75 metres (9 ft 0 in). The sculpture is one of a small number of major Hellenistic statues surviving in the original, rather than Roman copies.
Winged Victory has been exhibited at the Louvre in Paris, at the top of the main staircase, since 1884. Greece is seeking the return of the sculpture.
Discovery and restorations
In the 19th century
In 1863, Charles Champoiseau (1830–1909), acting chief of the Consulate of France in Adrianopolis (now Edirne in Turkey), undertook from March 6 to May 7 the exploration of the ruins of the sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace. On April 13, 1863, he discovered part of the bust and the body of a large female statue in white marble accompanied by numerous fragments of drapery and feathers. He recognised this as the goddess Nike, Victory, traditionally represented in Greek antiquity as a winged woman.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q216402. VIAF identifies the subject as 190487421. The Library of Congress control number is n2013003823. Authority coordinates are 48.860, 2.337. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1863, 1830 and 1909.
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This entry incorporates text from “Winged Victory of Samothrace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.